


i love my baby's soul

by Hymn



Series: Voltron: Legendary Defender [18]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam/Shiro - Freeform, Allura/Lance - Freeform, Angst, Depression, Grief, Hopeful ending?, M/M, POV Lance (Voltron), Pansexual Lance (Voltron), Post Season 7, also adding despite being a bit late, and also, dealing with kuron, i honestly don't know whether to tag this as shance also, i think??, okay i'm officially adding the shance tag as was suggested to me lol, or will be lol, please read author's notes, should have a sort of ambiguous, there is mention of, this is a little tricky to tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 05:52:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 27,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Lance doesn’t realize it for a long time, what it means -- the loss of it, the great, overwhelming, sorryscopeof it. Doesn’t let himself dwell on the fact that Shiro really isn’t the Shiro of before. ThatKuronwas an entity in and of himself, and he --He’s gone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [razzywrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/razzywrites) gave me an awesome kurance prompt "i miss you" with a broken heart and it sort of ate my brain a little. i'm roughly 6k into this with the end clearly plotted out (FINALLY!!), so i figured i'd start posting an installment every couple of days. chs 1-3 are already finished, and hopefully i will get the rest done pretty quickly. 
> 
> ABOUT THE CHARACTER DEATH AND TAGS, this is post season 7 so Kuron is already "dead," basically, but this fic is dealing with Lance's heartbreak as he realizes what that means and what they could have had. but it uh... i honestly don't know how to tag for the ending without giving everything away, but it's going to be dealing with what it means that shiro may or may not have kuron's memories up in his brain. this is actually totally a love story, fyi, it just... wants to make you hurt a lot :\ and because of the way lance knew kuron as shiro, there's a lot of shance in here that is actually kurance but also still sort of shance, and... hell, i dunno, guys. just let me know if there's anything specific i should tag about that i didn't.
> 
> last thing, i posted this ch as my original response to the tumblr prompt but there are minor edits in the first scene and some new content in the second scene. thanks for reading!

“I don’t understand,” says Pidge, mostly in a mutter and with an annoyed frown. All of them are watching on their vid screens because the lions are currently soaring through mostly empty space, and there’s not much more out here that’s as entertaining as staring at their new, white-haired Shiro as Pidge performs countless tests on his now partially cybernetic, enhanced body.

“Uh,” says Shiro. “Don’t understand what, exactly?”

There are countless cords and wires and weird alien tech that Lance hasn’t the vaguest clue as to the purpose of, all attached to the brutally clean line of Shiro’s severed arm. Pidge has been running diagnostics on and off since they first got him back. Since Lance and the rest first realized exactly how horribly they had failed their leader -- that they had been -- been --

_Duped_.

Been duped, and bamboozled, and played for fools by the creature Haggar had sent them. _Kuron_ , Keith had told them. A clone with special enhancements, one of many. A throwaway. A spy or a plant or a wolf in sheep’s clothing, tailor made and programmed to lie in wait so that it could tear them all apart from the inside out, and --

Lance refuses to cry again.

It was okay to cry in apology, for failing Shiro. But he will not -- will _not_ \-- give Haggar or her creature the satisfaction. He refuses, he -- Lance closes his eyes and leans back, lets the warm red light of the cockpit seep through his eyelids and bathe him in calm. He doesn’t know how to feel about this. He feels like a traitor for not just being -- being one hundred percent _relieved_.

It shouldn’t be complicated, should it?

Kuron wasn’t real. He was just -- a copy.

Across the live feed, Pidge says, “All of your memories from -- _before_. They’re all still here, but for some reason I can’t access them. There’s this... Ugh! I don’t even know, it’s not anything I’ve ever seen before, not quite. It’s almost like they’re behind a firewall?”

“Wait,” says Lance, blinking his eyes open. “What? From when, now?”

Shiro sighs with a little smile that is very nearly a grimace. “We just... Since this body isn’t my actual body -- but the clone’s, you know. We thought maybe I’d be able to have the same memories. To access all of what Kuron had done and thought, but...”

“Nothing?” asks Keith, curious.

“Nothing,” grits out Pidge, annoyed mostly at technology defying them than anything, it looks like.

_Oh_.

Lance definitely doesn’t know how to feel about this; his chest hurts just at the thought of -- of _something_ , he isn’t certain, because he isn’t _thinking_ about this, he’s not. He can’t. It’s enough, more than enough, that they have Shiro back. That Haggar couldn’t break them. That Keith is alive and they’re all here, going home.

It’s enough.

* * *

Only it’s... it’s not.

Lance doesn’t realize it for a long time, what it means -- the loss of it, the great, overwhelming, sorry _scope_ of it. Doesn’t let himself dwell on the fact that Shiro really isn’t the Shiro of before. That _Kuron_ was an entity in and of himself, and he --

He’s gone.

For a while it really was easy for Lance to ignore. The journey to Earth is rough enough without throwing existential questions into the mix, and that’s nothing in comparison to what was awaiting them. That’s _nothing_ to finding Veronica and his family and nearly dying so many countless times, being captured, being lost and confused and helpless and _willing to die_ , to defending the Earth from Sendak and the Beast, and --

It’s been busy, is the thing.

Busy enough for the quiet itch at the back of his eyes to be banked. Busy enough for Lance to not ask himself any hard questions, to wonder at what he’s lost, if it is _worth_ it, or if Lance is always going to have this hole in his chest that aches without rhyme or reason.

It... It really sucks, actually, that feeling.

And Lance doesn’t want to dwell on it. Doesn’t want to confront any of it, but when the battles are all won, and after the damage has been mended, somewhat, and life continues and they’re all just muddling through to make sense of a universe so great and vast and still in danger -- how everything has changed except that they’re all still soldiers with a war to fight --

Lance _notices_. Starts to really _see_ what has happened. 

The way that Shiro nods at him when they pass each other in the hallways at the Garrison, and Lance feels confused for one single, overwhelming moment, because _that’s it_ , that’s all Lance is given.

No flicker of a smile even when Shiro’s eyes are pinched with the pain of a headache; no tactile greeting or teasing rebuke or questions for his second-in-command. No _anything_ , really, nothing more familiar than before, so long ago, a time and a place Lance had been so proud to come so far from.

Lance is both bewildered and -- and _devastated_ with the loss of something he hadn't even realized he'd been in danger of losing.

Oh, _oh_.

It is a wonder that Lance has avoided thinking about this.

About the fact that it is _Kuron_ who had been the one to trust him so wholeheartedly. _Kuron_ had been the one to say that he was cooler than space. _Kuron_ had yelled and laughed and given Lance those _looks_.

Now, when Lance says, “Hey, Pal!” to Shiro without thinking, Shiro just says, “Oh, hey there, buddy!” back at him, because Shiro doesn’t understand, doesn’t _get_ it. That Lance isn’t saying _pal_ but is saying _Pal_ because it’s a stupid inside joke; it’s Lance making fun of Shiro for always being a Paladin in that _stupid_ Monsters & Mana game, and he -- it -- shit, it -- it’s just not fair.

Because it’s not Shiro that Lance is calling Pal.

It’s Kuron.

And Kuron’s not here anymore.

The moment, Lance thinks, that the realization really sinks in is about a week or two after they all get released from the hospital. Lance goes looking for him -- for _Kuron_ , but he hadn’t even realized that was what he was doing at the time. “Have you seen Shiro?” is what he asks, and when he’s pointed to the Atlas hangar that houses the MFEs he’s not surprised.

“Hey,” Lance grins, coming to stand next to him. “I see you heard about the trip to the belt. Let me guess -- you want to be one of the ones to fly these bad boys out into space, hm?”

Shiro frowns down at him, a little puzzled. “I -- No, I don’t. I have work to oversee here, Lance. I can’t just go gallivanting off into space. I think we’ve done enough of that recently, don’t you?”

“What?” Lance frowns back, just as puzzled. “But it’s -- I know how you feel about dwarf planets, dude. Don’t --”

“ _What_.” 

Startled, Lance stops talking. At this point Shiro’s frown is very nearly a scowl, and Lance, not knowing what else to do, matches it, feeling confused, bewildered, because he just… he doesn’t get what’s going on here, doesn’t understand why Shiro’s pretending like this is some big secret. Except -- 

Shiro asks, “How do you know that? I’ve never told you -- oh.”

Lance blinks.

Shiro’s scowl goes dark for one brief moment and then it’s gone, and he’s the calm, professional leader of _before_ \-- the one who tried to pretend he wasn’t suffering from PTSD, the one who hadn’t quite loosened up enough to admit that he had a wild streak, that he _definitely_ wants to go to check out Ceres even if he’ll ultimately be responsible and stay Earthbound if he _has_ to, not --

“My bad,” Lance manages to say, voice strangled. There’s a ringing in his ears and Shiro won’t look at him, suddenly.

After an awkward minute Shiro mutters, real quiet: “Alright, since you know, apparently, that I uh -- yeah, I do want to go. I haven’t piloted anything in ages, and --” he sighs, shoulders slumping just a little as he looks wistfully at where the MFEs are going over a final check. “Another time, maybe,” he finishes, flashing Lance a single, stiffly bland smile, and then he’s just --

Gone, off to inspect the preparations. 

Lance feels gutted. He stands there in that echoing cavern of a hangar, the belly of the friendly beast Shiro transformed into one hell of a mecha to save Voltron countless times in that last battle. And he feels achingly, vibrantly alone. And broken, and -- and _so fucking sad_ , he --

He turns on his heel and flees.

Because Lance hadn’t realized what getting Shiro back actually _meant_. He hadn’t known it would mean that Lance was losing his -- his best friend. His --

_Don’t think about it_ , he tries to tell himself, wishing desperately that he could go back, back to the hollow ache that he had been able to ignore, rather than _this_. This ripping feeling in his chest and gut, this tremble in his jaw, because spy or trojan horse or whatever else he had been, Kuron had been _Kuron_ , too, had been a little bit of everything to Lance for a while, and he --

Lance really misses him, is the thing.

Misses him so intensely it’s like an Altean broadsword slipping between his ribs, angling up, wrecking his lungs and his heart and his ability to _function_ , god, what even -- how is he supposed to survive the realization that all at once Lance lost the one thing he hadn’t even known he’d been looking for?

_Kuron_.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Lance thinks; but that doesn’t, actually, make it hurt any less.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> funny story, i haven't been able to stop second-guessing and reworking the next two chapters since i posted this and even if this could be better i'm really sick and want to keep going with the story rather than getting bogged down so instead of letting myself keep going around in circles you guys get the next two chapters super early, yay! 8D;; 
> 
> thank you for all the kudos and comments guys, i appreciate you reading this <3

They’re sitting at the mess, the whole lot of them, a couple of days after Lance’s little revelation. All six of the Voltron Paladins, plus Coran and Romelle, even Acxa now that Keith has dragged her into the light. Veronica was there for a bit, and so were Liefsdottir and Kincade before a training exercise called them away. It’s not anything official. It’s not like any one of them decided, Hey, let’s hold court in the mess hall of the Garrison -- but here they are all, all of them gathering, all of them reluctant to leave.

It’s nice. It feels like home, a little, a break or a breather or just a reminder of how much they’ve all done together, how far they’ve come. Being back on Earth means new duties that take them away from each other. Shiro looks great in his gray uniform, but he is also a swan amongst orange ducks, apparently, and is often far from their reach.

It should be a happy thing that he’s managed to join them, but Lance is -- is _conflicted_. He tries to avoid Keith’s curious gaze across the table and tries not to think about how there’d been an open seat further down but that Shiro had taken the spot next to _him_.

It’s like the universe is testing him, saying: _You know, now. You know what you’ve lost and what you can’t have -- but do you really understand what it means?_

And Lance does know better than to get his hopes up. He _does_ , damn it, but it’s -- it’s _hard_ , it’s hard to remember with Shiro right next to him, with countless memories to draw upon of Kuron doing the same, so similar but different in all the ways that count. But somehow he’s getting through it okay, manages to keep his limbs all accounted for and safely not touching any part of Shiro, and Lance thinks -- _maybe_ \-- that he’s going to get through this without breaking his own heart all over again, without adding more fuel to the fire of his own agony, but --

Shiro turns, heavy, muscled torso swinging snake-like toward him, all loose and miserable, until his head is tucked down so that he and Lance are almost temple to temple and Lance can feel the way his fingers freeze on the cheap aluminum of his spork, whole body gone stone-still and petrified with _want_ , with _longing_.

“Laaaance,” Shiro whines, and it --

There had been a day shortly before it all fell apart, when Lance had been hurrying through the halls headed toward the kitchen. “Whoa!” he had yelped at the first touch of cold metal circling his wrist, throwing off his momentum so that he swung around and staggered, facing where Shiro was half hidden in the doorway of a little used room.

“What the -- were you lying in wait for me?!” Lance asks, trying to catch his breath. His heart is quick with adrenaline and surprise at being caught so suddenly, without warning, and Shiro’s face is pinched. The room beyond him is dim, the lights turned to something like 25%, and Shiro tugs, something in the crumpled shape of his mouth speaking to bitterness and neediness.

“Hey,” says Lance, when Shiro only tugs again. “Heeey, Pal, c’mon, use your words. You like words. You’re good with words. What do you need?”

Shiro’s dark brows are pulled low, furrowed, but not in anger. More like he’s trying not to squint too obviously. He mutters, “You use too many words, sometimes. What do you think I need?”

As soon as Lance is through the doorway it slides shut behind him, closing them in. Shiro’s hand falls away and he goes to slump onto a couch, low down and with his legs all kicked out and careless. It’s a sight, a pretty and marvelous one, even, because Shiro is so contained so much of the time; so proper and precise and held together by all the responsibility he knows he bears, and refusing to slip for even a moment in case he lets down all those expectations.

“I think,” says Lance, “that you need to get better at asking for what you need. Save a few words for yourself, Shiro. You don’t need to give them all to us.”

His heart hasn’t really calmed down at all, has it? And actually, it just gets faster when Shiro smiles at him, a little crooked and small and unbearably sweet, sort of rueful. “You’re a good friend,” he says softly. “You don’t let me get away with anything.”

“Eh. I could say the same to you.”

The sigh that rips out of Shiro is long and gusty, half for show, and he slumps down even lower in the seat and rolls his head back, eyes closing. He says, “Laaaaance,” in this adorable little whine that is all annoyed, wavering demand, and Lance can’t help but laugh, startled. Laughs even more breathless when Shiro opens one eye like he’s peeking at him, and that little smile curls bigger, brighter despite the pain still pinching his features, and he adds, “My heeeeaaad. Fix it for me?”

“I doubt it’s possible,” Lance tells him, mock-serious, but he also cracks his knuckles and then raises his hands to wriggle his fingers showily. “But I suppose Lancey-Lance’s magic digits can make an attempt to work wonders. One Super Awesome Head Rub coming right up!”

It makes Shiro huff a little, and then Lance is curling a leg beneath himself to sit sideways on the couch. Shiro tips into him before Lance even gets a hand on him, and he’s got Black Paladin all warm and pliant against his front, his shoulder wedged up into Lance’s chest, so Lance readjusts, hopes Shiro can’t feel the steady pound and skip of his heart, and curls an arm around the back of Shiro’s head, fitting thumb and forefinger to temples, his palm resting lightly against the bridge of Shiro’s nose, brushing against the texture of his scar.

This time, Shiro’s sigh is sweet and pleased, and Lance can actually see the tension leave his neck, the way he goes boneless and vulnerable here, tucked away from the rest of the universe, just Lance by his side.

And that --

That had meant the world, though Lance hadn’t thought about it as such. Hadn’t let himself, because Shiro was his hero and their leader, and Lance had never tried to go with a guy before, only girls, even if he had known since he was fifteen and saw Mike Santiago’s naked chest all soaped up and glistening in the locker room showers for the first time that he was entirely on board to bat for either team -- _all_ of the teams, it seemed, if space had taught Lance nothing else.

But this was sacred. This was... 

This was Shiro feeling safe around him, trusting him, letting him in and Lance wasn’t going to ruin that, not for anything, not even fucking hormones or crushes the size of gas giants, no. He wouldn’t, so he didn’t think about it, didn’t make conscious note of the way he tried to breath in Shiro’s scent or memorize the feel of his body against his, the way his chest rose and fell with easy breaths, and --

All at once Lance is in the mess hall, the bright lights and the chatter and the metallic _ting_ of utensils against trays.

He blinks rapidly, because it’s not like he actually went anywhere, but his world had shifted for a moment, rearranging or revealing, and he’d been unable to ignore the memory, unable to forget the significance or the startling similarity between then and now, and he had forced himself out of his own head and back to the present moment, desperate not to linger when remembering only _hurt_.

Because that hadn’t been Shiro.

But now, here Lance was, and here was Shiro with his white head bent down like a secret to Lance’s, his breath against the side of Lance’s jaw, and his voice crooning out Lance’s name in just that tone, that familiar cadence, that way that --

That --

 _Fuck_ , how dare something so minute cause a pain of such magnitude. Lance has to fight to keep his shoulders from curling in, wanting to ball up defensively against the way his chest burns, heart breaking, because what, _what is this_ , this is not how Shiro acts, this is not what Shiro does with him, because their current Shiro -- the real Shiro -- has never lived a life with Lance as his right hand, his confidant, his -- his --

“Shiro,” Lance forces out, though the rhythm of his aching heart seems to tap out a different name: _Kuron, Kuron, Kuron_.

Shiro pulls back, and Lance can -- he can _feel_ it, actually. Can feel the way Shiro pulls not just away from him, but into _himself_. The way every little messy piece of him that he’s let out around Lance gets absorbed, tamped down; Shiro’s shoulders square, his spine straightens, his face smooths out.

He blinks at Lance, startled. “Yes?” he asks.

Lance’s mouth opens, but his throat is too tight and dry for words. He shakes his head, confused by the confusion in Shiro’s eyes, confused by -- by the closeness, the sudden distance, by his own wants and misery and damn it, _damn it_. He really fucking misses Shiro.

His Shiro.

 _Kuron_.

“Your head hurt?” he finally manages to ask, resting his gaze on the spork in his hand, trying not to let anyone see his face because he doesn’t _know_ what it looks like right now, but it’s probably not pretty. He feels ugly inside, all messed up and uncertain.

“Oh,” Shiro says, “Uh. Yeah, I guess. It’ll go away, though. Just a bit of a headache.”

Lance nods, bobbing his head. “Cool, right. Take some pain meds, yeah?”

“Mm. Sure.”

And that’s it.

Shiro smiles at him -- kind and familiar, grateful and contained -- and Lance eats his lunch while teasing Hunk about Shay’s recent arrival and Shiro argues with Keith and Allura about the quality of Garrison issued bed sheets, and inside Lance breaks apart. But that’s nothing new, that’s nothing he hasn’t hazarded before, and he just --

He doesn’t think about it.

Doesn’t want to think about how that had almost been exactly what he wanted more than anything in the world.

 _Kuron_.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s not like Lance can just… withdrawal.

He can’t just _abandon_ his team, even if he really just wants to hole up in his room and sob into a carton of ice cream, maybe, or lay his head on Hunk’s shoulder and stay there, not thinking or feeling, just _existing_ , for maybe a solid week. He wants to go somewhere private to lick his wounds, but there just isn’t the time or security to do so, and it -- it’s --

Being with them when Shiro is there and Kuron _isn’t_ , is just really fucking hard.

Lance doesn’t think he can be blamed for trying to duck out now and again; doesn’t think that anyone is likely to notice, not when they’re suddenly no longer all they have in the whole universe close at hand -- there is no shortage of people around them, friends both new and old, _family_.

So it’s not _abandoning_ his team to occasionally pass on a gathering to hang out with his niece or nephew, or help his dad around the house. It’s _not_ , alright. It’s perfectly, fine, it’s --

“Movie night,” Keith tells him in the hall when they pass each other, looking all geared up for a confrontation. “Shiro’s place. 2000 hours. _Be_ there, Lance.”

“Whaaat,” Lance hedges, arms wild like if he makes enough of a scene it will distract Keith from the tightness around his eyes, the tic in his jaw. “Would I skip on movie night?! Me?! I mean, okay -- I need to check and see if I have plans with the midgets, first, Uncle Lance can’t just --”

“ _Lance_ ,” says Keith, more growl than word, but with something plaintive in it that makes Lance stutter to a stop, waiting. 

Keith steps closer, shifting his body like he can hide this little exchange from the other Garrison members moving pass, curious. He lowers his voice and says, “ _Please_ , Lance. You’ve missed the last two. I need you there.”

Lance doesn’t know what to say. His mouth moves and words come out but he feels hollowed out and frightened inside, more than a little uncertain, and he doesn’t know what to say to this, to make it alright, to explain. “I didn’t know you felt that way, my dude, but --”

“ _Stop_ ,” Keith pleads. 

Again, Lance _doesn’t know what to say_. He’s left reeling in the face of Keith’s open honestly, and he feels violently torn all of a sudden, straddling a line he hadn’t known was there between protecting himself and being there for his team. He’s never been the type to choose himself over those he loves, and he -- he doesn’t want to start _now_ , it’s just... 

It hurts so much, all the time; and Lance can exist and function because he does his best not to think on it, not to dwell. He keeps moving because maybe someday he’ll find that he managed to outpace the heartbreak and leave it behind.

But he doesn’t -- he didn’t _mean_ to leave the rest of them behind, too.

“Sorry.” Lance clears his throat, looks over Keith’s shoulder for a flickering second, then pulls on a grin, somehow. “Didn’t realize I’d done that. Don’t worry, dude. I’ll be there, promise. But if you let Hunk pick the movie I might just turn around and leave again, I do _not_ need some emotional, sentimental, l-love story moving me to, uh,” shit, _why_ had Lance brought this up, “to tears. You know?”

His grin is wobbling just a little on one side, now.

“Hey… is there… uh, is there something you need to talk about?” Keith’s face looks pained, like it physically hurt him to get those words out. But he also looks determined, and concerned, and he lifts a hand up and touches Lance’s shoulder gently, and Lance --

_Lance cannot fucking do this._

“Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “Nope, nope, not a thing. See you later!”

He dashes off down the corridor to go and find Liefsdottir like he’d been _intending_ , before Keith can use any more of his newfound maturity to get to the bottom of Lance’s odd behavior. The last thing Lance wants is for his heart to be cracked open for others to see the raw and wounded edges, all the anger and helpless longing.

Tonight’s going to be hell, but he -- he’s a trooper, a soldier. Lance will get through it.

It’ll be _fine_.

* * *

It’s so far from fine Lance doesn’t even know where to _start_.

He has wondered so often what Shiro’s home might look like. Had wondered before he’d ever met the man, when he was just a handsome, smiling Captain on an official Garrison poster, beckoning Lance to follow his dreams up into the stars. Had wondered if they’d be similar, at all, have any of the same books on their shelves, the same vids, the same musical taste -- _any_ shared tastes, at all.

“God,” says Lance as soon as he’s in the door. “What are you -- this is the messiest apartment I have _ever_ stepped foot in, sweet merciful crow, Shiro, _how_ \--”

“Hey,” protests Shiro, albeit weakly. “It -- I, uh.”

“I know Adam was the neat freak,” Lance argues, glaring around the space with wide eyes, gesticulating wildly. “But this is _absurd_ , dude. Even for you! How many -- Seriously, are you building a _fortress_ with those pizza boxes?! Planning on protecting Earth from foreign invasion by countless layers of corrugated cardboard?! You --”

Shiro is looking at him strangely. 

“Uh.” Lance deflates all at once. Backtracks a little, face flushing, heart squeezing. Says, “I mean -- I assume that Adam was, uhm.”

“You --” Shiro shakes his head, locks the door behind Lance, and says quietly to the knob, “I’m sorry I don’t remember. The others -- they all know things I don’t, but nothing like... Like what _you_ seem to, Lance. How much did I --”

\-- _trust you._

Lance doesn’t know, of course, if that is what Shiro would have said. But he thinks it is, feels it in his bones like a tremor, a miserable little shake. _A lot_ , he wants to say back. _More than just friends, I think, but I never got a chance to find out. You -- Kuron, he --_

Shaking his head, Lance mutters, “Sorry,” into the waiting, awkward silence and heads into the living room where he can hear the rest of the paladins getting comfy. 

But before he can get far Shiro grips his wrist in one big, warm hand, holding tight. Lance is afraid to look back behind him, to see what is in Shiro’s face, and all at once he realizes --

_Fuck_.

Adam.

Is _this_ Shiro as okay with the loss of his ex? Not with his death, which no doubt would have been devastating no matter how long apart the two had been, but with the simple separation, the break up itself. _Kuron_ had moved past the end of their relationship, past the desperate, lurching desire he’d felt when he first came back to Earth to go out and _find him_ , to fix things, before Pidge and all the rest of them had bullied him back into space.

How bad is it for Shiro, though, who isn’t Kuron -- who never had a chance to talk it out with Lance during long stints of space travel, to lay some of that heartbreak to rest?

And then to come home just to find that Adam was _dead_ , he -- 

Shit, this is just… so much shit, Lance thinks, because he doesn’t want to do this, _be_ this, not again when he knows, now, why he always had a quietly bitter taste in his mouth whenever he thought of Adam, who had been lucky enough to date Shiro, to --

Lance lets himself be pulled back, into the sem-privacy of the little entrance way. Shiro’s eye are wide and dark, searching, and Lance winces, twists his hand so that Shiro’s grip loosens and Lance can grasp his fingers with his and give one, heartfelt squeeze. He says, keeping his voice low, “Hey, I’m -- I’m s--”

That doesn’t feel right.

That feels too small, and weak, and nothing at all like what Lance has earned, has gained, in his relationship with Shiro -- with Kuron. _How much did I_ \-- Lance wishes he could tell him, wishes he could scream aloud all that he’s lost, and how much just being here, now, and having to pretend like he _hasn’t_ is breaking him apart.

So he takes a deep breath and he says, “About Adam -- you must be grieving terribly,” which makes Shiro’s searching gaze go still with surprise. It’s not the original Japanese that Kuron tried to teach him because Lance is truly terrible at correct pronunciation, but it’s -- close.

It’s enough, maybe, for Shiro to _get it_. 

And when Shiro mumbles back, “I’m not quite sure what to say,” it feels like they’re having an entirely different conversation, a secret one, one where Lance says _I loved him, I loved the you that you were -- Kuron_ , and Shiro is saying back, _I’m sorry, I had no idea, I’m so sorry for your loss._

For a minute they stand there, awkward and aching, and Lance thinks that’s it, he’s free, he can go into the next room and try and find a face that won’t reveal his twisted insides, and he’ll get through the night and go home and weep into his pillow, he’ll --

Shiro asks, voice whisper-quiet, “Do I… Will I get over him? Over -- Adam. Do you know?”

Lance’s eyes flutter closed, pain a sharp, heady throb all through him, slow and impossible to escape. His fingers go weak and he tugs, and thank _fuck_ but Shiro lets him go, lets him take a step back. When he swallows, Lance’s throat makes that awful clicking noise, gone too thick and tight with misery.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Just -- give it some time, Shiro.”

This time, finally, Shiro lets him go.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a million thank yous to everyone who has commented and left kudos! i hope you don't mind that i'm not responding directly - my brain is weird and i get overwhelmed any time i reply to the comments on a wip for some reason. but please know that i'm reading them all and they give me life <3 <3 thank you thank you thank you!
> 
> next chapter might be out later tonight or tomorrow, it's almost done - but pls don't hold your breath lol

In the living room Lance does a quick head count. “What, no Allura?” he asks, and ignores the knowing look that Pidge gives him. He hopes he isn’t blushing, but he still feels hollowed out and weak with what has just happened between himself and Shiro in the hall, and he wonders belatedly if instead he’s giving something away with the pallor of his skin.

He feels sort of like a ghost, after all. Left behind, still haunting the world with his stupid longings, emotions too wild to lay to rest. It would be better if he could put them in the ground and have them stay there.

Behind him, Shiro follows. Lance feels like he does when he’s shooting -- every inch of his body on hyper alert, tracking hostiles even when he can’t see them. He takes a deep breath and flings himself at the couch next to Hunk, who complains about pointy elbows and lack of personal space. 

Keith says, “She’s spending some time with Romelle -- but she said that if she doesn’t start seeing you for sword practice starting tomorrow she’s going to send the mice after you.”

“Oh, man,” Lance groans, flopping even heavier on Hunk. “I miss those little guys. She should know that’s not a very good threat.”

“Fine,” Keith says, amused. “If you don’t start showing up for sword practice I’ll hunt you down.”

Lance makes a face at him.

At the end of the couch, Shiro says, “Sword practice?” in this kind of awkward tone, like he knows he shouldn’t be asking. 

Like he knows that he should _already_ know this.

A silence falls amongst the rest of them that feels equally as awkward, and then Lance is digging metaphorical fingers into his heart and _squeezing_ , just to try and keep it in one piece. He grins, and says, “Oh, yeah. I haven’t had a chance to show you since you came back -- I’m a master swordsman now!”

“ _Ha_ ,” barks Keith.

Pidge says, “He once tried to convince all of us to call him Lord McClain of the Knight of Voltron.”

Lance gives them a look of deep betrayal. “You called me Lord Fartface of the Fools, instead.”

Pidge’s smile is beatific. 

Shiro laughs. It sounds a little shaky, but genuine. “Sorry,” he says to Lance, because normally Lance would be sending _him_ a betrayed look, as well. But Lance… hasn’t actually been able to look at him since the hallway. He’s just this big, blurry figure in Lance’s peripheral instead, leaning against the end of the couch. “But it _is_ kind of funny. That’s cool, Lance. You have a sword, now, huh? Your bayard?”

“Yep,” Lance says, popping the ‘p’. “So, what movie --”

His attempt to change the subject fails, though, when Hunk pipes in with, “Shiro, are you going to fight with him? I had money on the next match.”

Lance winces. He wishes there were a way to brace for impact, but it’s impossible. Shiro comes around the couch and sits down and _damn it_ , why did Lance pick this spot? He should have gone and flopped on the floor with Pidge or, hell, crawled into _Keith’s stupid lap_ , or something. Anything but the couch. The middle of the couch, even! Where the only other available cushioned surface would be right the fuck next to him.

It almost seems like Lance can feel Shiro breathing; he’s never been this hyperaware before and it’s _miserable_.

“...What?” asks Shiro.

Keith answers. “Allura started training Lance, but when things picked up with the Voltron Coalition she didn’t have as much time. So _you_ started training with him. What gives, Shiro? You never told me you did kendo when you were younger.”

“I --”

Lance curls his fingers into fists, because the thing was that Shiro didn’t _like_ people knowing that. At least, Kuron had been awkward and hesitant and dragged his feet and eventually admitted that his grandpa had been a master swordsman and Shiro knew a thing or two. They had started their training sessions in secret, and the second time Shiro had -- no, _Kuron_ had --

Lance says, tone a little flat, “Hey, it’s already pretty late. My mom wants me home at a decent hour. Can we watch the movie, or what?”

He still can’t look at Shiro, so instead Lance glares at Keith across the room. To his credit, while Keith looks a little miffed to have the conversation derailed and Lance giving him a look, he goes with it.

Maybe he can read something in Shiro’s face, telling him to drop it, to leave it alone.

Lance can’t bring himself to look, but then while Keith is grumbling and Pidge is complaining that Hunk is hogging the popcorn Lance finds himself suddenly looking anyway. Shiro’s face is shuttered; composed, stiff, bland. There’s a vagueness to his gray eyes that reads distance, and his mouth is tighter than it should be. He’s the type of stillness that means that what he really wants is to get up and pace and wave his arms about in agitation.

The first time Kuron had decided he trusted Lance enough to give into the urge had been _hysterical_ , because apparently his internal ramblings could give Hunk a run for his money, even.

In the moment, Lance had known that it was a special privilege. Now, seeing Shiro so tightly contained, _knowing_ what is going on inside that handsome head of his, Lance aches anew at the loss between them. 

Shiro looks back at him, a quick flicker of his eyes.

Voice low, he says, “I haven’t done kendo in… in years.”

Lance licks his lips, looks away from his leader and then back, easing up off of Hunk in a move he hops is natural. He settles into the couch, head flopped backward, and says just as soft: “I know. That body has, though. I’m sorry, you probably didn’t want anyone to know, but Kuron --”

“Kuron did a lot of things I never would have,” Shiro grits out, tone harsh.

Somehow, Lance doesn’t flinch.

He just looks up at the ceiling as the movie starts -- some action flick, but in a fantasy setting; distant enough from their lives that they can make fun of it and laugh when things go wrong for the heroes, rather than feel the likeness too harshly -- and breathes evenly. He says, “Yeah. I know.”

* * *

Lance hasn’t been sleeping well, lately. Depression, maybe. It’s supposed to be normal when your heart is broken, at least, so Lance tries not to dwell on it too much. But it comes around and bites him on the ass because in the middle of the movie he drifts off. Which, fine, whatever -- no one will blame him. He’s safe, with people he trusts. It’ll be fine.

But he tips over the wrong way, is the thing.

He wakes up with a start just a few minutes after he falls under the first time, snorting wildly and starting to flail. But Shiro’s warm metal hand presses gently against Lance’s bicep, and Shiro says, “Hey, it’s all right. Relax.” so Lance does, and the next thing he knows he’s asleep again, cheek squished onto Shiro’s muscular thigh.

He’s too tired and bleary and confused in that moment to get to safety. 

The movie is nearly over when he wakes next; the rest of the group apparently got really into it, because when Lance casts a half-opened, sleep-blurred gaze out to check on them they’re all watching the climatic explosions on screen with riveted expressions. That’s good, that’s fine -- Lance is content that his people are content.

Sighing a little, he shifts, rolling onto his back. The hand on his arm doesn’t move, so it settles onto his chest instead once Lance is done, right over his heart. 

“Hey,” says a voice, soft and familiar and near.

Lance smiles a little and says, “Hey,” back, tilting his chin up so he can look upside down at Kuron. Kuron’s close, staring down at him; gray eyes dark and gentle and intent, mouth crooked up on one corner with fondness. His thumb strokes over Lance’s heart in an easy arch.

“Lance,” Kuron whispers, leaning down over him. “Listen to me, I…”

Lance hums to show he’s listening, but he’s _tired_ , and also warm and happy, and he feels at peace in a way he’s nearly forgotten. His eyes are already drifting shut, and he thinks he feels Kuron’s forehead touch his despite the awkward angle, a little gentle _thunk_ followed by a faint, nearly silent groan, and his voice mumbling, “Don’t fall _asleep_ when I’m trying to tell you something, jeez.”

With a protesting noise, Lance whines. “ _Tired_. Need sleep. Tell me later?”

Kuron just sighs, the gentle exhalation ruffling Lance’s hair the last thing he remembers before he drifts off again, sliding toward dreams and darkness and rest, only --

Wait.

_Kuron_.

Lance throws himself back toward wakefulness with a thundering heart and a full body flail, right off the couch and to the floor. 

“Ouch,” says Hunk. “You okay there, buddy?”

Lance just gasps -- because _ouch_ is right, that kind of hurt -- and looks wildly up toward Shiro who is -- is looking down at him with raised brows and an amused smile, but none of the easy familiarity that should have been there. There is no hint of _Kuron_ , he --

Fuck.

Lance slumps against the floor, levers his suddenly heavy arms up and lays them over his face because he’s not sure what his expression might be like. Is he _dreaming_ now of replacing Shiro with Kuron? Jesus, what kind of person does that make Lance?

Shiro says, “Oh, movie’s over. How’d it end? I must have dropped off at the end there.”

“Seriously?” asks Pidge. “C’mon, Shiro, that was a great movie! Nature was evil and attacked everyone --”

“It was _not_ a great movie,” Keith says dryly.

Hunk’s answering snort is pointed. “Sure, man. And that’s why you were on the edge of your seat, just like the rest of us. You okay, Shiro? It’s not like you to drop off like that. The Garrison isn’t running you too ragged, is it?”

“No, no,” Shiro is quick to say, and with his face covered Lance can hear the tell in Shiro’s voice, the one in Kuron’s always translated to _I am definitely lying through my teeth right now_ , even better than usual. “It’s not so bad. I’m fine. Just have a little headache, is all.”

A foot nudges Lance in the side, but he doesn’t move. Just stays there, breathing, trying to pack everything away again so he can pretend like he’s not the worst human in existence, like he’s not subconsciously trying to replace _Shiro_ , the real Shiro, with _Kuron_ , the fake that had nearly destroyed Voltron. 

_This is so fucked up_ , he thinks.

Aloud, he says, “Dude, stress headaches are a real thing. Take some meds, get some sleep. C’mon, guys.” Finally, Lance forces his arms and all the rest of his body to move, because the sooner he does the sooner he can get out, go home, and freak the fuck out in privacy. “Let’s clear out. Let Shiro get some rest.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Shiro says.

Lance just shakes his head, standing carefully. He looks at Hunk and raises his eyebrows, because Hunk had always been his go-to for when he needed a little help getting everyone else to lay off of Shi -- _Kuron_. Hunk looks back at him, and for a moment Lance can’t breathe because he thinks he sees in Hunk’s gaze way too much knowledge, way too much _emotion_ that is apologetic and hurting _for_ Lance and that --

Lance looks away with a shaking breath, and just shrugs. 

“It is pretty late,” Hunk points out, tone even. “C’mon, Pidge. Help me clean up. Lance, you wanna go ahead and head out? The little ones are probably waiting up for you.”

“Yeah,” Lance says, voice a little choked with gratitude. “Yeah, thanks. See you guys!”

He manages to scramble out of the living room without it being too obvious that he’s running _away_. Maybe. He hopes, at least, but there’s a bitter little thought curling horribly in his head that the only person that it might matter if they _did_ realize it, won’t. 

Shiro doesn’t know Lance well enough, not anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as with most of my fics this keeps winding up longer than anticipated as i chase ideas down as they come to me lol. if you notice the expected chapter count keeps, uh, increasing, that would be why. XD; but we're getting closer to the endgame, <3 this chapter is shorter than last one, but hopefully the next one will be ready in a day or three. brief mention of a panic attack toward the end, fyi.
> 
> thank you as always for reading, kudos, and comments. you lot are amazing and i don't deserve you but i am so very happy to have you! hopefully i won't let you down, <3 <3

A hand grips his arm, just above his elbow, as Lance is scrabbling at the lock on the door. For a second his whole body freezes, tensing up, but he knows the shape of Shiro’s hands, even the new one, better than anyone’s. It’s not him.

Lance looks back over his shoulder and grimaces to see Keith frowning at him.

“Hey,” he says. “You -- what’s going on? What was --”

“Nothing! What? What was _what_ , Keith, something up? Message me about it, will you? Like I said, mom wants me home at a decent-ish hour, and like _Hunk_ said, the little ones are probably --”

“What is going _on_ with you?” Keith interrupts, tone hushed and bewildered. He steps closer, face crumpling up in something like concern and confusion. “You’re acting so strange, ever since we got back to Earth. Ever since…”

Lance stares at him, helpless to derail the coming trainwreck this conversation is surely headed towards.

“Huh,” says Keith. “ _Huh_.”

Lance is okay at reading people, but a lot of it is instinctual. Standing there, heart in tatters and brain racing with all the things that Lance has done _wrong_ , all the ways in which his emotions are betraying him, Lance can’t read for shit the expression in Keith’s narrowed eyes. He tugs his arm back, but Keith doesn’t let him go.

“ _Rude_ ,” huffs Lance, tugging harder.

Slowly, as if he’s feeling his way through the sentiment, Keith asks, “While I was… gone. You and Shiro -- uh, did you -- ? Is that why you’re --”

“Stop it.”

The words are out before Lance can think better of it, can think of _anything_ , really. He thinks he’s shaking, or maybe that’s just internal, where no one else can see. But he feels -- horrible, really. All broken up and monstrous with it, towering in his grief. He grits his teeth and tugs sharper, meaning it this time, and Keith’s fingers slide away, grip gone slack at the low intensity in Lance’s command.

Keith’s eyes are a little wide, staring.

Lance tells him, “ _Stop_ , just. Think for a second, okay? You were _gone_ , so you don’t -- you don’t get it, not really. Not like the rest of us. We were… tricked, right? Kuron was there, but we thought he was Shiro, and -- and it’s strange, all right? Like having a friend and then that friend is just --” he has to swallow hard, and his voice is hoarse when he finishes, saying, “ _gone_.”

“But,” Keith waves a hand up in the air, gesturing back toward the living room, “but _Shiro_ is still here. And Kuron was just --”

Lance has to say it. He _has_ to, if just so that he can keep working on convincing himself. If just so he can stop Keith from saying anymore, from trying to make sense of a senseless misery. 

“He was a lie. Everything we had was -- fabricated.”

“No.” Keith is frowning, now, and he crosses his arms over his chest and leans back, peering down at Lance in that way he has, sort of arrogant but mostly not, just a kid who was once lost and alone doing his best to stand his ground, to not be trod over. He says, voice insistent, “Kuron _was_ Shiro, Lance. That was the whole point, he was a copy. So even if Shiro doesn’t remember everything, he’s still _him_. Still the same. It --”

Lance is shaking his head almost as soon as the first sentence is out of Keith’s mouth.

“It’s not,” he whispers. “I don’t -- you don’t get it. You _don’t_ , Keith, but I --”

At the end of the little hall there’s movement. Lance falls silent, and he knows that Keith notices it because his shoulders tense and his frown grows more pronounced, frustrated at the interruption. Lance knows who it will be before they come into view because the universe lives to rub salt into his wounds, apparently.

“Everything okay, you guys?” asks Shiro, brows quirked and expression calm, waiting. 

It’s a look not unlike the one he often wore when Keith and Lance were constantly at each other’s throats in the beginning. Before Shiro had died and that expanse of time before Kuron had come to them, when he and Lance had been forced to put behind them any petty differences for a greater cause.

Lance drops his gaze down to Keith, who hasn’t turned around yet. Is just giving Lance this _look_ , now, like he’s daring Lance to prove him wrong -- or right, maybe. Lance sniffs, wrinkling his nose, and manages to get a hand on the lock behind his back, flipping it with a _click_. 

“Totally,” Lance drawls. “Keith’s just spouting nonsense, as per usual.”

The little strangled growl is actually kind of funny in some distant way, but Lance has already looked past him again, toward Shiro, with his all-white hair and his new blue-lit arm and his old habits. Lance thinks about the way that Kuron had been all alone in that little ship, dying, trying to get back to them, back when Lance and Keith were still struggling to figure their shit out.

Lance says, “Hey, Shiro. Do you have claustrophobia?”

Shiro blinks. So does Keith, actually. Lance can see it in his peripheral. And then Keith is shifting sideways, looking toward Shiro and Shiro is frowning, looking puzzled. “No,” he says, entirely honest. “I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Hmm,” smiles Lance, rocking back on his heel and reaching for the doorknob. He feels like sobbing in relief when the cold metal finally makes contact with his palm, but he’s keeping it together, somehow. “Just curious.”

Keith whips his head toward Lance, fast, as he _gets_ it, gets the point that Lance is making, here. “Wait --”

“Nope,” Lance tells him, eyebrows arched. His face hurts and his heart hurts, and he feels a little like he’s going to be sick. “Like I said, it’s not the same. You don’t -- you don’t get to be a bully about this, Keith. So just _drop_ it.”

“Hey,” saiys Shiro, tone tense. “What’s going on here, really?”

Lance just shakes his head, fires a single finger gun, and says, “Later, guys,” before slipping out the door, quick before anyone can catch him. He shuts it firmly behind him and then he’s _gone_ , as fast as he can.

* * *

He has a message on his phone when he gets back, but it’s not from Keith like he’d half been expecting. No, it’s from Pidge, instead, and Lance feels dread heavy in his gut even as he opens it up, and reads: **i don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to stop. get over it lance. it’s not shiro’s fault he doesn’t remember. we can’t punish him for it.**

Which isn’t _fair_ , because that’s not what Lance is doing, not at all.

Or at least, not on _purpose_. All he’s been trying to do since he realized is -- is compartmentalize, really. To figure out how to sift through the memories and the emotions and learn how to differentiate between what belongs to Kuron and what belongs to Shiro. 

It was precisely what he’d tried to show to Keith -- that they weren’t the same, and it wasn’t fair to treat them as such.

**I’m not!** Lance sends back, trying not to think guiltily of how poor a job he’d done not even an hour ago, with that whole stupid moment where he’d dreamed up Kuron in Shiro’s place. **I don’t know what Keith told you but I’m NOT doing that, I’m trying to treat him like Shiro, I promise.**

It’s barely a minute before he gets a reply, **JUST TREAT HIM LIKE NORMAL, LANCE.**

Groaning, Lance flops back on his bed, but he doesn’t like being spread out like that right now, not when he feels so vulnerable already. Instead he sits back up, curls up over his knees, and presses his forehead to his hands. He wishes --

He wishes he could forget.

Wishes that he could just tell himself to let it go, to stop hurting, to give it all up; to accept the differences and the change and the loss and carry on like it’s natural, somehow. But there’s nothing, really, that Lance can do to change the way he feels -- and he’s been _trying_ , fuck.

He hates this -- hates _himself_ , maybe, most of all.

**I don’t think Shiro would like that very much** , is what he sends back. He regrets it immediately. It feels too telling, too much like admitting to something he doesn’t have the right to. He adds hastily, **He’s not Kuron. He’s made that clear. It doesn’t feel right to treat him that way when he didn’t get to choose, you know?**

While he waits for a reply, he tries to catch his breath. He ran all the way home from Shiro’s apartment, glad that it was late and dark and that he was well known and none of the guards out on patrol had stopped his mad dash.

His lungs are still burning, and his calves and thighs are quivering and his breath is whistling, still, through his throat like a knife sawing at him, but --

It’s not the physical that really hurts right now.

He just… fuck, Lance wishes he hadn’t stopped running, is the thing. Wishes he could have just kept on going to the ends of the world, until he dropped down from exhaustion so great he couldn’t care anymore, couldn’t sit here in his new room with his new things and struggle to grapple with reality.

It really would be better to forget, he thinks. 

If Shiro can’t remember then maybe it would be best if Lance couldn’t, either. If he could just forget all about Kuron ever existing in the first place, but that -- that gets his stomach twisting up in a horrible way, actually, that thought. That he might forget Kuron and all that happened between them. It feels like betrayal, like _death_ , like --

He might be about to have a panic attack.

Lance drops his head down between his knees, still heaving for breath, and his phone buzzes with another message. He’s half desperate when he goes to open it, because he thinks that if anyone is going to understand what Lance is going through here then it’s going to be Pidge. They were always close with Shiro, surely they’ve lost nearly as much as Lance has, at least in terms of _friendship_ , if not --

**just make him fall in love with you again, it’ll be fine. as far as i could tell there wasn’t any coding to make kuron act differently from how shiro would in normal situations. so if he macked on you that’s probably just shiro.**

Oh, holy _crow_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eh, apparently i am impatient to get past this section because to be perfectly honest lance and i don't know _what_ to think anymore lol. sorry if this ch and last come off kind of confusing and back and forth -- it just _is_ a confusing situation, you know? 
> 
> thanks again for reading <3
> 
> eta: hup, i go back and forth with pidge gender identifying as neutral and female in my own headcanon, but i usually go with gender neutral in my fics. i'm a fair bit gender queer myself and as much as i love pidge as a representation of a teenage girl, i personally think it's more important to represent gender fluidity and neutrality. but i did accidentally have lance refer to them with a gendered term in this chapter, so i'm gonna go in there and fix that now, sorry~

Lance feels -- feels _sick_ , suddenly. Because it’s not like that’s a new idea to him. The hurt part of his brain, the little rabbit-scared piece of him circling back around again and again, plaintive, desperate to not feel so _wounded_ anymore, has been asking almost since the beginning: if Kuron could love him, then why can’t Shiro?

But that’s -- that’s not right. 

Not fair, or any possible way to fix things, either. There _is_ no fixing anything.

Because Shiro _isn’t_ Kuron, even if Kuron had very nearly been Shiro at one point, right at the start. The things that Lance and Kuron have been through -- the circumstances, the trials and tribulations, the long slow days in the black where they’d had nothing to do _but_ talk -- how much of that is what had shaped their relationship, shaped _them?_

Even if Lance’s relationship with Shiro -- the _real_ Shiro -- could deepen and grow, change with time to something similar to what Lance had had with Kuron, how close could it even come to the same thing? Is there any _chance_ that Lance could regain what he’s lost?

Or would he always be _comparing_ the two? Trying to force Shiro into Kuron’s shape, trying to make him into someone _else_.

Lance has to press his wrist to his mouth to keep from puking at the spiralling madness of that thought. 

It’s not _fair_ , he can’t -- he can’t lay that on Shiro. He can’t pin all his wild, unfulfilled hopes and dreams on someone who is very nearly a stranger at this point. Even if Lance _did_ try, even if he was selfish enough to try and recreate what he had it -- 

It wouldn’t be possible.

He can’t get back what he’s lost, he knows that much, despite the wild rhythm of his heart in the face of Pidge’s suggestion. So much of what had shaped his and Kuron’s relationship was _different_ , unique to their circumstance. Lance _knows_ it would be impossible to get him back, to get him exactly as he had been -- and it -- he --

 _Fuck_.

He just can’t _do_ that to Shiro, it wouldn’t be fair. Not to Shiro, and not to himself, and not to _Kuron_ , either.

Into Lance’s panicked radio silence Pidge sends: **is this any different than if someone gets amnesia, or something? would you stop loving someone then?**

Lance... doesn’t know how to handle that thought.

With shaking fingers he sends back, **I don’t know that it’s the same thing, Pidge. And like… I’m not trying to get anyone to fall in love with me, okay. Except maybe Allura. Because Allura is amazing and a goddess and I adore her.**

And of course, Pidge, with all the tact of a teenager capable of startling insight but not a lot of emotional delicacy, replies: **that’s just because you didn’t realize you were in love with shiro or that he was in love with you. and really, if you’re going to be this cut up about him then i think you should probably not pursue anything with allura. that would be super not cool.**

Lance stares at that for a minute, barely breathing. Then he shakes his head and grits his teeth and tries to keep from drowning. **Wow, no, I am so not talking to you about this, Pidgeling. You are like a younger sibling to me, so go bother someone else with your burgeoning matchmaking thirst and leave me the hell out of it.**

Pidge sends a little shrug emoji and the words, **i’m just calling it like i see it.**

Thankfully, though, that seems to be the end of it. With a whimper, Lance lets his phone drop to the floor at his feet and buries his head in his arms, folded over his knees so that he is hunkered down, trying to hide. 

He doesn’t need this right now. Doesn’t _want_ this.

First Keith, and now Pidge -- they don’t know what they’re saying, what they’re asking for. They _don’t_. Lance thinks about the way Shiro has looked every time he’s learned that Lance _knows_ him, that any of them know more of him than he’d been willing to allow, and it -- it looks like violation, is what it looks like. 

_Kuron did a lot of things I never would have._

Yeah, Lance gets that. He _does_ , honestly, even if no one else has apparently received the memo. 

But Lance is also too tangled up, too raw, too lost in his own agony to even have a hope of knowing which way is out. How to navigate this minefield and come out more or less unscathed. There is a piece of him, he thinks, that will always and forever belong to Kuron. Maybe not freely given, but gone nonetheless. Lance won’t be getting it back, and he’s trying to come to terms with it, but it’s hard, so fucking hard when Shiro is _there_ , and everyone is clamoring for him to -- to -- 

Lance groans, sinking lower, head dizzy.

God, Lance doesn’t know anymore, not really. Because Kuron might not have been the real Shiro, but he was certainly _something_ \-- some _one_. Lance is -- confused. Uncertain, and reeling, and he doesn’t know what he’s even trying to convince himself of anymore. Is it better or worse to imagine that Kuron was just a copy, or to believe that he was his own person?

But the very least he can do -- the one right thing in all of this -- is for Lance to do his best to take all the stuff that Kuron gave him and pack it away, hide it from view, because it’s not _Lance’s_ to have, not anymore.

Kuron was a lie that Lance had fallen in love with and now he’s -- he’s gone.

It’s as simple as that.

* * *

Only it’s… it’s not that easy.

Lance feels stupid for thinking even for a moment that it _could_ be. None of this is simple. Nothing is neat or tidy about how this all shook out. Shiro was dead and then he wasn’t; Kuron was there and now he’s gone. Lance is left, looking a fool.

As the week slides past and then the next follows, he keeps checking his calendar, biting at his lip and trying to ignore the twist in his chest as the dates change. Lance knows what is coming -- he can’t ignore it, or forget, no matter how he tries. And he watches Shiro from a distance, waiting, and when his shoulders start to get tight, his eyes pinched, his face pale and shadowed with lack of sleep, Lance _knows_ why.

Kuron may or may not have been programmed with a subtly different personality than Shiro -- sure, Pidge had protested that it’s unlikely, but that isn’t _certainty_ \-- to react or want things differently, maybe, but he’d had all of Shiro’s memories. _Real_ ones, looks like, because Lance knows what’s plaguing Shiro, knows because Kuron _told_ him, shared it with him and let him in to ease the burden, but --

But Lance _can’t_ do anything about it, now. He can’t, because it’s not his. _Shiro’s_ not his.

And after the way he’d looked when everyone had learned about the kendo thing… well, Lance is loathe to bring this up. He can’t just go up to Shiro and say, “Hey, man, so the anniversary of your grandparents’ death is coming up, yeah? You want to cry on my shoulder about it again?”

Lance shudders just thinking about it. 

And he -- he feels useless, too, and hurt. He can’t stop remembering the way Kuron had broken down that second time during their training match, the two of them still trying to figure out how to use the two different forms of swordplay against each other in a way that would benefit Lance as practice. 

“I miss them,” he’d gasped, knees buckling a little. “I _miss_ them, Lance. So fucking much. You think it gets better, but it doesn’t -- it just hides and waits and then it _hits_ you, all at once, just as powerful, it --”

Lance had been amazed and also humbled, seeing those tears drop slow and stubborn from gray eyes, the harsh clench of Shiro’s jaw as he flexed his hand around the hilt of the practice sword he’d been using. 

That Shiro had _trusted_ him enough to stay there, to let himself be _seen_ like this, it --

It had meant too much, really. 

And, a few days later, holed up together in one of the lesser used observation decks, too strung out and bored to sleep: learning how everyone on Earth knew about the violent deaths of Shiro’s parents when he was three in that car crash -- public record for one of Galaxy Garrison’s finest -- but almost no one knew about the slow decline in his grandparents’ health, or the way they had both died in their sleep, hand in hand, when Shiro was sixteen.

 _They_ were the ones who’d raised Shiro. _This_ was the anniversary that would hurt him most.

“I just -- it was too hard for a long time,” Shiro had confessed, shifting uneasily. “Kendo reminded me of them too much, you know? It _hurt_. And I didn’t want it to keep hurting, so I -- I locked it up, instead. Not that it helped.”

“Do you feel better, now?” Lance had asked, careful not to look too intensely at Shiro, though it was hard. 

“Yeah. I guess? Almost no one knows about them, but I like it like that,” Shiro -- _Kuron_ \-- had said, head tilted back to stare at a nearby constellation neither he nor Lance knew the name of, his skin pale and blue-tinged in the light coming through the observation deck windows. “I don’t -- my pain is private. I prefer it that way. And it’s frustrating enough that everyone knows about my parents. But I barely remember them, so it’s -- I can grit my teeth and say thank you whenever I get condolences from strangers.”

Lance had sidled in close, heart squeezing so tightly he’d almost been afraid it would stay like that, forever -- bent all out of shape for Shirogane Takashi and his voice like this, hushed and intimate and a little bit raw, just for the two of them. 

“I’m not a stranger.”

“No,” and Shiro’s smile had been sweet and sad and perfect, and he’d added, “I don’t mind sharing my pain with you, Lance. I _miss_ them. I really do.”

Then, it had been okay for Lance to nudge his shoulder up against Shiro’s, to take his weight for a moment. To let him know he wasn’t alone in his grief. But that had been -- 

A different time. A different Shiro.

Now, Lance glares when he realizes that he’s staring at his calendar again, running through thoughts and ideas about how to make this easier, to make certain Shiro knows he’s not alone. Because Lance can’t do that. He _won’t._

This -- Shiro’s pain, his grief -- is private. 

It doesn’t belong to a stranger.

It doesn’t belong to _Lance_ , not anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pardon the wait, i have only my poor health and lack of focus to blame lol
> 
> this is the point in the story where, if all you want is lance's pain and the loss of kuron etc, you should probably stop reading? consider this the start of part two, wherein things begin to change. and while i can't promise anyone is going to like the end result of this fic, i do so hope i make the journey there something worth reading. <3 thanks for all the comments and kudos, all of your tears have given me mad amounts of joy :D

He keeps that in his head like a mantra: _Shiro doesn’t belong to you._

And it’s not so hard to believe, is the thing. Even aside from how Shiro doesn’t remember -- can’t remember -- it’s almost like all this time agonizing over everything he’s lost and can never have again has been to create pathways in his heart and brain to remind him: _this isn’t Kuron, this isn’t who you fell in love with_. The white hair helps, too, because it’s so starkly different from the Shiro in his memories, from _Kuron_ , that it creates a neat divide.

When Lance realizes that he laughs so hard in the shower that he slips, falls, hits his knees hard on the porcelain beneath him. The tears mix in with the water streaming out his hair, and all of it is hot and none of it is particularly cleansing, but it feels _right_ , maybe. 

Because if Shiro’s grief -- his thoughts, his pain, his laughter, and his past -- don’t belong to Lance, then that just means that Kuron did. That Kuron was _his_ , and oh, oh that hurts in a way he hadn’t expected, good and bright and fierce and tragic, because: 

_Kuron was mine_.

Lance wants, badly, for that to be enough.

Only it still feels like there’s a black hole opened up in the center of his heart, small at first, but growing in size, sucking in all light and the good that still remains, the worth that is still present in living his life. He feels it hobble him but doesn’t know how to break the rope that binds him; doesn’t know how to hook out of this spiral of despair.

It just sucks him in like water down the drain.

All those secrets Lance once held in his cupped palms, glittering like gold, have turned to ash, it seems. Lance chokes on them; it seems a wonder that he can still breathe, that his ribs expand, his lungs inflate. He lies awake at night, ignores everyone during the day -- Pidge, and Keith, and Allura, even, because even if Pidge had been a dick about it, they weren’t wrong about that one thing, at least. Allura deserves better than Lance’s grief. 

He ignores Shiro, too, but that’s not hard at all.

Shiro doesn’t want his attention anyway.

* * *

(It _is_ hard.

It’s perhaps the hardest thing that Lance has ever done; he knows the difference between them, he accepts it -- but it still _hurts_ , and Lance doesn’t know how to turn it off. Every time he thinks it’s possible he finds it’s not, because every time he turns away from Shiro it’s like he’s turning right into a memory of Kuron, and then all he can see are the echoes, bouncing back and forth between them, reflecting, because they weren’t the same, but that doesn’t always mean they were _different_.

Lance turns his calendar over; he still sees it in his mind’s eye, still counts the dates, still waits.

Fuck.

Just… fuck everything, he thinks. 

Annoyingly, his eyes are hot all the time, even when he’s been refusing to cry.)

* * *

“Okay,” Hunk says, arms crossed over his yellow polka dotted apron. “You and I need to have a chat, Lance.”

This...does not bode well.

It’s three days before the anniversary, and Lance, even though he’s been deliberately not looking, _knows_ Shiro’s been closed off. None of the Paladins see him much these days, it’s true, but now it feels deliberate in a way it hadn’t before. Feels like when Shiro had been hiding nightmares, insecurities, trying to be aloof and untouchable by removing himself entirely from view whenever possible. 

Even though this is Shiro, not Kuron, Lance still hates it; hates the way it feels so familiar. How it ignites in him a fond, tender warmth, exasperated kindness, because he’s been here before with Kuron, has learned tricks on how to look sideways at him, to needle and nudge, to draw him back into himself. To get Kuron to smile even what he’d wanted only moments before was to scowl.

Lance wants to fix it because that’s what Lance _does_. That’s what he’s good at.

And it is so, so familiar to Kuron that staying still, staying away, makes Lance feel like he’s going to shake apart from inaction. But Shiro isn’t _his_. Lance refuses to do anything; Shiro is on his own.

And, of course -- Lance hates that, too. 

It might have been why he’d been so eager for Hunk’s siren call, inviting him over for cupcakes.

He should have realized it was a trap.

“You promised me baked goods,” he tries, knowing it’s a weak defense.

Hunk nods, expression over-the-top solemn, serious and knowing: “And you shall have them, my friend, fear not! There shall be decadent, delicious, gooey cupcakes ala yours truly!” 

Almost, _almost_ Lance smiles. But then Hunk drops the act and looks at him, truly solemn, eyes so warm and kind and worried it makes Lance ache all the more. “I think we’ll need them,” Hunk adds, a little hesitant, a lot determined, “but while I bake, I want you to _talk_ to me, Lance. I’m your friend, you know? You’re allowed to talk to me.”

Lance groans, letting his head fall forward to smack into the clean kitchen counter of Hunk’s temporary residence. 

He doesn’t want to talk; he wants to forget. 

No. He doesn’t want to _forget_. That’s complete bullshit. Lance clings to these memories, now, to the knowledge of Kuron being his, of all those secrets that have turned to ash. Lance clutches fistfuls of them and swallows it down, too dry, too cloying, too much devastation entirely. 

Talking out loud about it just seems cruel.

Hunk says, “You have until these babies are in the oven and then you’re letting me in, Lance. I mean it. I’m worried about you.” 

“...Right.”

“I _mean it_ ,” Hunk argues. “Lance, I mean it, okay? You can’t keep carrying all of this -- whatever it is, exactly -- all on your own. You’ve got to let me in, bud. Let me help. You’re… I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you’re not exactly doing all right on your own, you know?”

Rude.

But not wrong, either.

And it’s entirely unfair how sad and kind Hunk sounds, saying that. It makes Lance feel weak; makes him want to be weak. Twists his heart around in his sharp-edged, busted up chest, so that he’s flinching and wishing, desperately, for someone to take over, just for a while. To let him lay all of this at their feet for _them_ to pick up and try and bear the weight of for a while.

But...would that even be fair? This pain is _his_. It’s all he has left of Kuron, after all, and -- and Lance is loathe to give it up. To let anyone else touch it. 

He feels hotly possessive, deeply belligerent, entirely outside of himself with it. He wants to dig his fingers into the wounds of his memories and feel them drip with agony because that way he knows it was real, knows it’s _still_ real, even if just to him, and --

That’s...weird, right?

You’re not supposed to want to keep hurting, are you?

Breath hitching, Lance tilts his head so his cheek is against the cool wood. Blinks his eyes open and looks at the bright, cheerful blue of the sky through the open kitchen window, out past the sheer curtains that billow and flap playfully in a sweet breeze, a picturesque little vignette of time, of the winding, never-ending slog of forward progress; a tiny moment out of context that says the world is kind and good and untouched by grief.

_What a lie_ , Lance decides, grim and bitter, and --

Okay.

Okay, _no_.

“I’ll talk.” 

Lance grumbles it, but he means it, too, because he’s sick and aching and afraid of his own impulses, suddenly. He had startled himself with that last thought, the aching pessimism and hatred of it. That’s not him, or at least, not the him that Lance wishes to be. It scares him, and he refuses to lift his head, to let Hunk see in the light of an otherwise perfect afternoon how broken and fucked up Lance really is inside. 

“Thank you,” Hunk says, very quiet and gentle.

* * *

It comes out in awkward starts and stops, in long, rambling tangents, in hitched breaths and flushed cheeks and Lance’s eyes wet and burning, no doubt shining like a beacon in his haggard face. By the time he finishes he feels wrung out, wasted. He wonders if this is what exorcism feels like; wonders if, finally, he can lay this grief to rest.

He doubts it.

Still isn’t certain that he _wants_ to, and is deeply uncomfortable at the idea he’d rather stay in this misery than get past it. Where has that desperation to outrun his pain gone? Where is the part of him that longs to be okay again? 

He doesn’t know.

He just -- he doesn’t want to let Kuron go.

Hunk leans against the counter, the old school egg timer at his elbow steadily ticking away. The kitchen has grown even warmer with the oven on, and the scent of chocolate and butterscotch fills the air. Lance is too sad to be hungry, which is a pity, because it smells amazing. 

Lance still hasn’t lifted his cheek from the counter. He’s still staring out the window at the perfect, pretty sky. 

“Lance,” Hunk finally says, sounding helpless.

At the beginning, he’d tried to interject here and there, to relate and console and advise. But as Lance had kept going, determined, Hunk’s words had crumbled around the edges so that it was only choked, sorry vowels that emerged, hurt sounds, sympathetic noises. Through the end he had been entirely silent, and for the last five minutes -- Lance has kept track via the timer, purely so that he doesn’t have to focus on his thoughts -- he hasn’t moved or said a word.

Until now.

Just _Lance_. Just his name, and in it Lance hears all the fucked up shit that he’s been dealing with, tangled intimate in the letters and making it trip out of Hunk’s mouth in a way Lance has never heard before. “Yeah,” he sighs back, as if in answer.

The timer trills. 

With a muffled curse, Hunk goes to the oven and pulls out the tray of cupcakes. Sets them aside, turns the oven off. Comes back to the counter and then, still, can’t seem to find the words to address everything Lance has told him. For a moment, Lance feels triumphant -- not glorious with it, not high and mighty and singing with joy, but viciously, maliciously contented that he’s proven to himself, through Hunk, how awful all of this is.

“Don’t worry,” he forces himself to get out in response to that awful sentiment. “There’s nothing to say. It’s just -- it’s nothing. I’ll get over it. We can just forget --”

“Bullshit,” Hunk replies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been working on this story the past week, so i have the brunt of the next several chapters (not the whole fic or anything, sadly, HOW LONG IS THIS THING GOING TO TAKE? I KNOW THE ENDING, WE'RE GETTING CLOSER, BUT HELL IF THIS STORY HASN'T DECIDED TO TAKE ITS SWEET TIME GETTING THERE.) written already, just gotta fill in some holes and clean it up. here's hoping the next update won't take too long <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic continues to be Q: how do you feel about this thing?? A: omg so many things SO MANY THINGS

Lance pushes himself upright, staring. Hunk is glowering down at his arms, once more folded over his chest. His eyes are a little red rimmed, lashes tacky. Lance feels another guilty little jolt at laying this at Hunk’s feet. He had been right; he should have kept it private. Should have kept it secret within himself, safe and protected and his forever.

He tries to ignore how his hands are trembling, how relief has swooped nauseatingly through his stomach more than once at the telling of his pain, his heartache. 

Everything is so twisted in on itself, it -- 

He doesn’t even know how he feels, let alone how he wants to feel about it.

“Pidge isn’t wrong,” Hunk continues. “I’m not saying they’re right, either! I just. I know you hurt, Lance. You’re hurting real bad, and you have every right to. You’ve lost something...something special. I can’t even imagine…”

Lance can _feel_ his face tightening, whole body going tense with pain, heart pounding all at once.

He’s been ignoring Pidge mostly because he refuses to delve into what they said. Refused to touch the parts of that conversation that had made him so deeply uncomfortable, so strangely uncertain. And now Hunk isn’t giving him a choice, and Lance doesn’t -- he doesn’t know if he’s _ready_ to hear whatever it is Hunk is going to say.

Of course, Hunk is brave enough to say it all anyway.

Lance tries to brace himself him for it; he knows it won’t help, but he tries anyway.

“But if -- if this was different,” Hunk tries, peeking up cautiously at Lance as he feels his way through his words. “If this wasn’t -- uh. If it really were like someone getting amnesia or something, forgetting -- if you had been together with that person before this happened, would you just...what? Give him up? Say so long, you’re not good enough now?”

“...What?”

Lance feels -- hell, he feels like he can’t breathe.

He figures he ought to be used to that feeling by now, but he’s not. The whole world seems to be spinning for a moment and he has to grip tight to the counter to stay where he is, to keep grounded. His stomach is burning, heart ballooning out with agony, with fear, with disbelief. 

Hunk goes to check the temperature of the cupcakes, to see if they’ve cooled enough for icing, muttering, “We need more chocolate than this. Do we have ice cream? Maybe nachos for dinner.”

“Hunk,” Lance says. “It -- It’s not the same thing. Kuron died. We all heard it. He was _dying_ when Allura put Shiro into that body.”

“Shiro died, too,” Hunk points out, and, after a pause, admits: “Though I don’t know if that matters, in comparison. I just… I won’t say anything else after this, I’ll do anything you want, anything at all to try and help you through this, buddy, you know that, right?” 

Lance does; but it’s hard to find comfort in that right now, with Hunk prying him open, loving him enough to try and _help_ , even if he runs the risk of pissing Lance off, of damaging things between them. Like Pidge had probably done, in their own awful way. That means something, Lance thinks, though it’s hard to believe in it here and now, when he’s wounded and aching, wanting nothing more than to be told he’s right, to be given unthinking comfort, because everything else is too horrible to bear.

He doesn’t want to listen to this.

He wants to run away before Hunk can say anything else. Wants to hole up in his room, curl up under his covers, and lick his wounds. 

He doesn’t want to listen at all, because he’s -- he’s _afraid_ , maybe.

But there’s a -- a moment, a moment inside of him where Lance thinks about Kuron, and he knows without needing to dwell, without needing to think, that Kuron would want him to be brave. That Kuron would have brushed a metal knuckle against Lance’s brow, gentle, so gentle, and said in that way he had, a little wry, a little broken, like he knew this truth because he’d faced it himself, once: “If you’re afraid, that’s probably all the reason you need to listen. Fear isn’t what you should run from. Fear is the reason you should turn around and hold your ground. Don’t let it control you, Lance.”

_Fuck_.

Lance has to bite back a choking sob, because that memory -- half imagined, entirely possible if only Kuron wasn’t _gone_ \-- feels like a warm embrace, and his eyes are burning again, wet and hot, and he’s dying inside, and it’s unbelievably painful and good at the same time.

God but Lance misses him, so fucking much.

Hunk turns to look at Lance, broad face open and beseeching, begging him to understand. “But I just… I don’t know, Lance. It...sort of feels like you’re giving up on both of them?”

The world spins, turns, dissolves, remains entirely untouched by Lance’s own grief, his confusion, his anger and sadness. Hunk breathes, and Lance matches him for want of anything else left to ground him, and then Hunk sighs and goes back to the cupcakes, checking them again, and -- and Lance listened, okay? He listened, he heard it, but he --

Lance stares down at his pale-knuckled grip, not knowing what to think.

* * *

Because it -- it can’t be that.

Lance can’t be _giving up_ on them.

True to his word, Hunk had been nothing save compassionate afterward, quietly feeding him cupcake after cupcake, cuddling with him on the couch and watching stupid reruns from their favorite season of Power Rangers. It felt nice, probably, except that internally Lance can’t seem to get past that phrase: _feels like you’re giving up on both of them_.

Because that simply can’t be it, except that Lance leaves Hunk’s house in a daze in the early evening, and instead of going home he climbs aboard a shuttle and goes to the Garrison, makes his way through security, and winds up in the hangar housing the lions. 

Red opens her maw with a silent welcome, and Lance doesn’t even ask permission -- he just _goes_.

Out in the black, Red dismissing every comm that tries to reach them, it’s quiet and still; empty for all that space is so full, of planets and stars and debris, of people and lives and messy, terrible emotions, and so much devastating _loss_ that sometimes it feels impossible to get up again from the blow of it.

Is that what Lance has been doing?

Just letting himself sink down into defeat? Has he given up, written everyone off -- himself, Kuron, Shiro? He wants to say no. That what Lance has been doing is -- is coming to _terms_. He’s been staring down the truth no matter how it burns, has been slowly driving himself insane with the bitter, brutal honesty of it all: that he’s lost Kuron, lost Shiro, lost, lost, _lost_.

He’s shaking. His hands are curled around the controls and _shaking_ , and Red is making a soothing hum, but Lance is crying so hard he can barely make any noise, because this isn’t _fair_. How is admitting that Shiro isn’t Kuron giving up on them? How is seeing Kuron as _himself_ , not just a lie or a trick or a copy, giving up?

It’s not.

It’s _not_.

There’s no possible solution to this. No easy answer, no convenient fix. The convenient fix was popping Shiro’s soul into a body that already belonged to another, as if that exchange were somehow equal, somehow without a downside. But it -- it --

“ _You don’t have to be strong_ ,” Lance thinks Kuron might have murmured, lips grazing Lance’s hair in a tender touch, if only he were here to turn to and Lance had dared. “ _But you can’t keep pretending, either. I know you can do this, Lance._ ”

It figures that even in his imagination Kuron would want Lance to be better than he is.

Would _believe_ in him, and -- 

Fuck.

He’s crying even harder, now.

But it’s just him out here in the black, just him and his pain, his hurts, his memories. Just him and Kuron who hadn’t even known until the end that he was something other than what he was. Just Lance, Kuron, and an absence so great it eclipses everything, it --

Lance remembers Kuron telling him about how grief felt, how it could be quiet and lurking and then hit you all at once, as fresh as the day it happened, more painful, even. 

It won’t ever go away. Lance is going to grieve for the rest of his life, going to miss Kuron forever and a day, it seems like. And that, Lance thinks, is the part he’s still having a hard time accepting. Is afraid of understanding. Because once he does, it probably means that Lance has to learn how to _live_ with it. Really live, not just wallow, hide, choking on misery and pushing everything away.

He has to learn how to do more than just survive this.

And he’s still not sure he wants to, which is probably a good indication that he should. The tears slow a little, now. His nose is all clogged up and he’s breathing awkwardly through his mouth but it’s slowly evening out, becoming steadier. He’s still shivering in little shockwaves despite that Red has turned up the temperature in the cockpit, trying to keep him warm. Slowly, he blinks his tear-tacky eyes open, takes in the vista of space, of Earth a blue and white jewel before him.

_Feels like you’re giving up on both of them_.

Is it possible? Is there a better way to do this? A way that doesn’t make him lose himself, betray Kuron’s memory, cast aside Shiro? Is that what he’s been doing? He makes himself think about it; forces himself to face the chance and what it might mean. Everything he’s willingly ignored, shut out. He hadn’t wanted to consider, before, when Pidge had first suggested it -- _is this any different than if he’d gotten amnesia?_ \-- but now he is, he can’t not, not with Hunk asking it as well. But it --

It’s _not_ the same thing.

He knows that beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s _not_ that simple. It’s not the same.

But it’s also not all that far off in some ways, is it?

Because if this _was_ Kuron, still Kuron, and he had merely forgotten, then -- then it wouldn’t matter how much Lance had lost, not in the face of what he might gain trying to get him back. Kuron would have been worth that; is worth that. 

Groaning, Lance slumps into the familiar comfort of his pilot’s chair. Red’s taken them out away from Earth, towards their star. He wonders how long it would take to get to Mars, to Venus, to rocky little Mercury. Wonders how much heat Red could take, if they could dance amongst the solar flares and escape radiation, escape death one more time. His hands tighten reflexively on his controls, almost tempted to find out, but --

He’s running away again.

Lance thinks: they’re not right, but they’re not wrong, either.

He’s not going to get Kuron out of Shiro. It’s impossible, and Lance doesn’t think he’d want it, anyway. But Lance can’t just forget. He can’t just lock himself up in the past and stop moving, stop living, stop trying to connect to the people he cares about. 

And that’s always going to include Shiro, both on his own merit and because of Kuron, who Shiro never was but maybe could have been; someone he will never be.

Lance can’t keep drifting. It’s lonely being this lost, and --

And he thinks he owes it to himself, to Kuron and to Shiro, to do better.

To be better.

No matter how much it’s going to hurt.

Unlike his earlier thoughts at Hunk’s, this one’s not just bitter -- it’s bittersweet, instead. A sort of wistful, unhappy ache. A surrender as well as a stand, to realize that he’s been going about this wrong, or if not wrong, then not exactly _right_ , either. And it hurts still, and Lance feels certain it will always hurt, this loss -- his heart will always cry for Kuron, long for the man he’d known, the one he’d first fallen in love with.

But he knows now, he can see it -- Pidge hadn’t been wrong when they’d pointed out how shittily Lance has been treating Shiro, that Lance hasn’t been treating him normally at all. Hasn’t been treating Shiro as _Shiro_ , even when he’d thought he’d been respecting that distinction, and instead has only been treating him as -- as not-Kuron. 

As someone no longer good enough.

Around him, Red purrs comfortingly, gracefully spiraling through the black, content to just be there with Lance, to help in anyway she can. Lance lets her take the lead; just sits back and watches the distant stars blur by. Because he will be better; he has to be. Kuron would want him to. 

But for the moment, all he wants is to relearn how to breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: pidge & lance finally talk
> 
> i swear shiro is going to be back and there will be more kuron memories and lance is still going to be crying SO MUCH in this fic, just /waves hands around anxiously, LIKE I SAID, this fic is making us work for it lol


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm trying really hard not to stress out about how this section is or isn't working out just gotta, uh, keep going, keep chugging along, try and get through to the end OH GOD, I HOPE PEOPLE STILL ENJOY THIS FIC T_T

Eventually, an alert is allowed past Red’s defense, lit up green on the display. It’s from Pidge.

**want some company?**

Lance considers ignoring it. 

It would be easy, he thinks, to hold onto the hurt. But he’s hollowed out, now, kind of empty. The tears and the grief, the agony of explaining himself to Hunk, the worse agony of facing his own fears; it’s all drained him. Anger is too hard a thing to hold on to with tear stained hands, his grasp too slick. For now, all that seems left of him is the slow, sorry throb of heartbreak, as familiar as anything at this point.

And if there’s one thing he thinks he’s learned, now, it’s this: there is no easy solution, not even to grief.

Would it be easier to think that everyone else is wrong? That he’s the only one who hurts, that he’s the only one who’s doing it right? Probably, but it’s not true. Lance knows it’s not, the same way he’d assumed Pidge would understand, more than anyone else, how hard this was: because they probably do.

Text was probably not the optimum medium for a heart to heart, but they’re each of them doing the best they can in an impossible situation and -- and Pidge is young, and not the best at emotional deftness, but they had _tried_ , hadn’t they? In their own clumsy, abrasive way, Pidge had been looking out for both him and Shiro, Lance thinks. 

Hopes. 

He’s not up for anyone seeing him like this -- he’s a wreck and probably has snot on his face -- but like hell is he making the mistake of another text to text conversation. Still, he lets himself smile even though no one is there to see it, just a little, and opens up a direct audio line to Green. “Hey,” he manages, a touch uncertain. “I, uh --”

“Look, Lance. I --”

They sound as uncertain and unhappy and awkwardly determined as he feels. Lance’s smile grows a little more real. He blurts out, “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” before the two of them can keep being embarrassingly incompetent at emotions and apologies. He feels immediately better for having said it.

There’s a pause, and then: “I’m sorry I was a jerk about it.”

Lance nods, even knowing they can’t see it. “We’ve gotta work on your bedside manner, Pidgeling,” he teases, feeling lighter for it, no matter how rough his voice still sounds, tear-laden and too-tight. “Now come out here and fly with me.”

“Roger that,” Pidge says, voice a little rueful, threaded through with gratitude and relief.

It’s a start.

* * *

Flying about in outer space with one of your best bros is pretty peaceful, Lance thinks. They keep the comm line open between them, and both their lions adeptly keep any other messages from getting through and rupturing their bubble. “We’re totally going to get yelled at,” Pidge says, almost like an afterthought. “You didn’t even let anyone know you were heading out, let alone why. Iverson about shit a brick, dude.”

Lance laughs; it hurts, but less than he expected it to.

“Yeah? And were you well-behaved?”

“Hell no,” says Pidge. “I told Shiro he’d better not let anyone follow us or I’d sell his collection of vintage Pokemon games online. I, uh. Forgot that it was Kuron who told me about them. He didn’t look too happy with me.”

“Ah.”

Lance should have a better response, but he doesn’t. 

_Ah. I know how that is_ , or _Good to know I’m not the only one fucking it up_. 

But that might be cruel and Lance is tired of pain. He doesn’t say anything, not even _Wow, he’s really a nerd, isn’t he?_ Because that may be fraught with just as much. It was what Pidge had said when Kuron first told them about his little obsession, how he’d kept sane on the flight to Kerberos by bringing along his Nintendo VC. 

Lance’s chest aches a little keeping it back, suddenly desperate once more to share this pain, to know that he’s not alone, but --

“Yeah,” Pidge says. 

_Yeah._

Lance’s breath hitches, because in the tone of that one word is the answer to all of it, every sentence Lance had avoided saying. His heart clenches up, all tight and hot and shuddery, eyes burning bright with tears, because -- he was right. 

Pidge _does_ get it.

“They’re not the same person,” Lance says, only a little brokenly. “Even when they _are_ the same, they’re -- they’re not.”

“I know,” Pidge sighs. They sound sullen about it. “Of course I know that. He -- Kuron, he saved my dad, Lance. He got my dad _back_ for me, and I -- I don’t care if it was coding, or Haggar, or -- or what. I just know that Shiro might not have done it, that Kuron did, that --”

“Hey, whoa,” says Lance, sitting up a little, startled by the overflow of words, the desperate edge to them. “Slow down, Pidgeling. It’s okay, it’s --”

“It’s _not_ ,” they exclaim, and then they clam up. 

Lance can hear them breathing, tight and ragged over the line. Carefully, he licks his dry, chapped lips, tries to think of what to say, but -- he’s so worn out. He’s empty, still, just a hollow shell of longing to encase his sad, weeping heartbeat. He can’t think of what he _should_ say, what Pidge might need to hear.

So he just says, “It’s really not,” on a wavering breath.

Pidge sounds angry when she keeps going, “It was awful setting up that code in Shi… _Kuron’s_ arm, you know? It felt like betrayal, but I just couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk everyone else, and I -- I thought that was the worst, you know? But then he _died_ , and. And --”

“It got worse.”

“It really did,” Pidge agrees, anger fading all at once, making way for a fragile sort of sorrow. “I’m glad we didn’t lose both of them. I’m glad that Shiro’s back, I just wish they were _both_ here. It’s hard losing my best friend.”

Lance can only close his eyes, can only breathe.

If he keeps breathing, maybe he can get through this. 

If all he focuses on is existing, expanding his lungs, pushing air out -- maybe he can survive the sweet sharp agony of hearing his own heart bared like this. He knows, he knows just what they’re feeling, only it wasn’t just a best friend that Lance lost, it was -- everything.

 _No, not everything_ , Lance tries to remind himself. But fuck if it doesn’t feel like it, all the time.

Plaintive, Lance asks, “Then why did you --” before cutting himself off. He doesn’t know if he wants to pursue that question, doesn’t know if he wants to reveal more of himself through Pidge, doesn’t know if it’s fair of him to press.

But Pidge hears him anyway; the awkward, embarrassed irritation from her end of the comm reveals it.

“Sorry,” they cough. “I was...mad. You didn’t stick around, so you didn’t see. Shiro was -- he wasn’t too great after you left. He yelled at Keith, and Keith yelled back, and -- and there may have been tears? I think he might be feeling… I don’t know.”

Lance’s recent insight lends him the words: “Like he’s suddenly lacking in our eyes? Like he keeps disappointing us without even knowing why?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Pidge bursts out. “Which isn’t fair. It’s not Shiro’s fault, it just -- it’s a no win scenario. And I was angry about it, because I hate not being able to _fix_ anything, you know? I just… I wanted to fix it. Him, and you. You made Kuron happy. And you’re so sad now, even though you try really badly to hide it --”

“Hey,” Lance manages instinctively, though the indignant yelp is too soft and a little shaky to be believed; he’d thought he was better at pretending. Apparently not. 

Or maybe, just maybe, his friends -- his _family_ \-- simply cared enough, knew him well enough, to take note.

“-- so I just -- I thought I was helping. I thought maybe I could help if -- if I --”

It makes sense, Lance thinks. He feels a little exasperated about how much it makes sense, Pidge seeing the problem and trying to figure out the equation to solve it, impatient and bull-headed and desperate.

“I know, Pidge,” he says, and here, now -- Lance has forgiven them, truly. “I get it. It’s okay. But that’s...that’s not going to work. It won’t help, Pidge.”

Pidge groans.

Too shaky to smile, Lance still huffs an almost-chuckle, recognizing that noise. It’s their _everything is the worst omg_ groan, and it’s surprisingly good to hear it. Lance feels a little lighter, too, hearing how very much Pidge had had their heart in the right place, even if it had come off poorly in the moment. 

“Thanks. For trying.” He has to clear his throat a little, it’s gone too thick.

“I thought...”

Their voice trails off, sinking into depressed silence. The black is soothing; there is no sound other than the soft, familiar mechanical and electronic noises of Red’s bulk moving through space. Just emptiness, heartbreak, and the comfort of not being alone. Lance asks, “What’d you think, Pidge?”

“I thought I could -- I thought I could fix it, you know? At the beginning, when Shiro was first put into Kuron’s body. When I saw that Kuron’s memories were intact, I -- I tried to access them. To give them to Shiro. That way, maybe…”

Lance’s mouth feels dry, tongue too thick as he tries to imagine it. He waits for Pidge to keep going, and they do, slow and miserable.

“I didn’t want to lose him,” Pidge confesses. “Even then, right at the beginning... Maybe I’d had time to get used to it -- I mean, I’d already assumed he was being controlled by Haggar, maybe _clone_ wasn’t that much of a leap? And after… After everything we’d been through. It wouldn’t have been a perfect fix, I know. But I thought --”

They sigh, a lonely sound. 

“I guess I just thought that it would be better than nothing, if Kuron could at least live on through Shiro. You know?”

“Who would he even be?” Lance wonders idly.

“What do you mean?”

Lance says, “Didn’t Shiro have his own memories from in Black? So if you -- if you combined them, then who would it be? Shiro, or Kuron? Both, neither? It just -- I don’t know. I don’t know how that would work. Hell, I forgot you’d even been trying to do that. Merge their memories, I mean.”

He can almost hear Pidge’s shrug over the line; the defeat in it is palpable.

“I failed,” is all they say.

_So did I._

_We all did_. 

_I’m still failing, I think, but I’m going to try to stop. I want to be better. I want to be stronger, for you, for Shiro, for Kuron -- for all of us. There’s nothing else to do_.

“Ah.”

Pidge sighs out, like they’d heard all that and more: “Yeah.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bad health day so honestly this hasn't been cleaned up enough considering i just added like, a shit ton to this scene lol and there was zero fact checking on timeline stuff oops sorry love you all~
> 
> thank you for the comments and kudos, thank you thank you T_T

It’s getting late. Lance checks the chronometer, carefully keeping standardized Earth time in the corner of the main display screen. They need to get back, he knows, and likely before anyone comes up here to make them come back; before people start to suspect whatever fibs the Garrison dreamed up to excuse this to the greater public. Before he causes more pain and worry for those who love him.

“Okay, Pidge,” Lance says, aiming for serious, likely landing on exhausted. “I’m opening up a vid-feed. I need you to tell me exactly how awful I look because I did not bring any of my supplies.”

“Lance,” says Pidge, tone surprisingly somber. “You haven’t really been keeping up your skin care regime lately. We’ve noticed.”

...Damn.

With a sigh, Lance adjust the comm to include video anyway. Pidge looks okay, not quite like they just had a brutally vulnerable couple of hours. Just a little tense, the lines of their face sharper than they should be, edged with tight control to overcome grief. Lance is impressed, and then he winces because Pidge’s eyebrows shoot straight up looking at him.

“Damn, Lance,” they whistle. “You need a cool rag and a dark room or something.”

“Quiznak.”

Pidge snorts, leaning an elbow on the arm of Green’s pilot chair, chin on fist. “I’m messing with you, a little. It’s not too bad. Eyes a little puffy, nose a little red. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your eyes look so blue, crying really works for them --”

“ _Dude_ ,” says Lance, dismayed, and then Pidge is snorting again, chortling, curling an arm around their middle and curling forward to laugh out right. Lance rolls his eyes and pats down his pockets. He’s in civilian wear, and despite what he’d told Pidge, that was actually just an assumption. He hasn’t been paying attention to the real world, lately, or his usual patterns of living. He might --

“Aha!” he crows, pulling out a slender tube of moisturizer. 

Pidge is still laughing, but they manage to tease, “I dunno if that’ll cut it -- want me to find you a paper bag, Lance?”

“I am so going to kick your butt during our next gaming session.” Lance dabs the moisturizer gently on, tense muscles of his shoulders relaxing some at the cooling touch, surprisingly soothing. He feels a little better, too, for the normalcy, for the ribbing from Pidge, the banter he’d been worried wouldn’t be easy again, but still is. He manages an arch look at them: “No mercy, you hear me?”

“Oh,” Pidge grins, eyes shining. Some of the hard-edged control has fled their face. They look softer now, a little happier. “I’m sooo scared, Lance. Oh no.”

Lance sniffs, digs out a crumpled napkin from another pocket to blow his nose.

* * *

When they touch back down on Earth Lance has successfully cleaned up a little, and despite exhaustion he thinks that the both of them are feeling better, a little buoyed up. Lance forgets, sometimes, that strength isn’t just a matter of being strong strong for others, but of letting them be strong for _you_ in turn. And yeah, he’s still miserable, he’s still depressed. He still feels sort of like crying all the time, but he’s remembering, too, that there are good things left, people worth paying attention to.

 _I can be better_ , he promises. _I will be_.

Of course, that vow is put to the test as soon as they enter the hangar.

Shiro is a monochromatic pillar of agitated muscle, lit up icy blue in places, waiting for them. “Uh oh,” Pidge mutters. “Looks like _someone_ is still pissed.”

Despite all of his plans, his determination -- seeing Shiro down there, pale hair shining, arms folded cross over his chest, scowl in place, leaves him empty and aching, all his words swept away by a wave of longing. How shitty that even Shiro’s anger makes Lance miss Kuron, reminds him of that time when Kuron had been fighting off migraines, loss of time, had yelled at Lance more than once. They hadn’t known about the programming then, Kuron least of all.

Once, in the midst of all that stress, Kuron had sat long after he’d finished breakfast, fidgeting and trying to act like he wasn’t. Lance, wondering at it, had remained as well. Only when everyone else leaves, when it is only Lance and Kuron left, Kuron drops his face into his hands, elbows on the table, and groans.

“Uhm,” replies Lance, leaning back in his chair in surprise. 

The tips of Kuron’s ears are pink, Lance thinks, and the wonder of that almost makes him miss the following words: “I’m a jerk.”

“...What was that?”

Shaking his head, Kuron parts his hands so that Lance can see his face -- twisted up in a shamed grimace, lightly stained with a flush, eyes not quite meeting Lance’s. “I feel like a jerk,” he offers, a little clearer this time around.

“Oh.”

For a moment, the two of them just stare.

Until now, Lance hasn’t been certain that Kuron can accept him, can believe in Lance and what he can bring to the team. Has felt shut out and dismissed, and -- and it’s sucked, really. Before, at the Garrison, it had been different. Lance had known his own ambitions, his own reckless desire to succeed, so stiff, asshole officers trying to kick him to the back of the line had been expected, something to rebel against and disprove.

But here, Voltron -- this matters in a way nothing else has.

And…

And Shiro. Lance’s hero, the man he’s looked up to and wanted to impress ever since seeing his flight records at the top of the board years after he’d left the Garrison. Shiro’s never quite taken him seriously, not on a regular basis, at least, has never quite _trusted_ him, not like he trusts Keith and Pidge, people he knows and has known, and Lance…

Well, he supposes he has only himself to blame, but this -- this has been more than expected, this current aggression, this frustration, this shutting out entirely, it --

It actually _hurts_.

“That’s ‘cause you are a jerk,” Lance decides after a moment of contemplation. When Kuron jerks his gaze toward him, a little surprised, Lance just offers a lopsided grin and shrug. “You said it first, man.”

Kuron huffs a little, rubbing his fingers into his eyes, bowing his head. His shoulders are all tensed up, bowed up like a defense. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. If I’m apologizing for being a jerk, then I probably shouldn’t take offense that you agree I’ve been a jerk.”

Lance snorts. 

“I’m sorry,” Kuron says. “For what it’s worth.”

Warmth blooms in Lance’s chest. He’s a little embarrassed about it, actually, how much sway this man seems to have over him. But it’s a relief to feel _good_ , rather than shitty after a dressing down, so he lets himself take a moment, lets himself just enjoy it, and then --

“It’ll be worth more,” Lance says, almost casually, “if you actually mean it. If you, you know, actually act like you don’t _want_ to be a jerk with me. Rather than just saying after the fact that you’re sorry for the jerkiness. I mean, like -- I’m a jerk, I know. I’m awesome at being a jerk. But I try not to _really_ be a --”

“Can we please stop saying jerk?” Kuron asks, amusement peeking through.

“-- an asshole,” Lance adjusts, waving one hand in the air magnanimously. “Not when it counts.”

Kuron hums, his hands no longer covering his face -- which, sadly, is also no longer flushed fetchingly pink -- but instead curled up under his chin. He stares at Lance a moment, eyes tracking back and forth like he’s really looking for -- for something? Or just _looking_ , maybe, and Lance is suddenly startled. Suddenly feels a thrill up his spine like he’s in someone’s line of sight, a bullet with his name on it locked and loaded and ready to fly.

“Er,” he says, both hands now waving helplessly in the air and when did _that_ happen, what --

“That’s true enough.” Kuron smiles a little, chin still tilted up on his hands, looking a little like a kid, actually, like someone other than the Black Paladin, Captain Shirogane, leader and soldier and desperately trying to keep up the act. Lance feels his breath woosh out of him, staring. His hands fall lightly to the edge of the table and hold steady.

Kuron says, “I’ll try and do better, Lance. Feel free to keep letting me know when I’m being a jerk, though. I could probably do with the reminder sometimes.”

“Sure,” Lance remembers squeaking out. “Sure, sure, sure thing, leader mine. Can do, will do, uh --”

And, standing on the edge of Red’s jaw, her open maw a portal around him, Lance remembers how Kuron’s smile had quirked into a grin, the mischievous look in his eyes that was there and then gone as he rose from the table, tapping it with metal knuckles once before leaving. Lance sees Shiro before him, changed and unchanged, and feels the ghost of Kuron at his back, pulling at him.

How is he meant to balance this?

Lance knows he _needs_ to, but the question is: _how_?

Even outside the pain, Lance just doesn’t know the script, here. Doesn’t know the way to push and pull, how to sidestep too much and land in safety, in just enough. How does he treat Shiro like Shiro when Lance and he never quite got a start? When Lance is constantly reminded, constantly living one foot in memories, of how far he and Kuron had come?

“Really,” Shiro says to them, brow raised in challenge. “ _Really_. You’re just going to hijack the Lions without even a _mention_ , barrel off through _several_ no fly zones, freak out every person in the command center, and -- did you know all the news channels are wondering whether there’s been an attack and we’re just trying to cover it up? You --”

“Ugh,” Pidge cuts in. “I’m totally selling your collection after all.”

Oh.

Maybe that will work?

Lance forces his voice to something like a drawl, and ekes out, “Yeesh, don’t be a jerk, Shiro. Live a little, hm?”

His heart beats frantic to say it -- to utilize some of what he’s learned from Kuron here, with Shiro, who has no idea the meaning. It’s playing dirty, Lance thinks, him and Pidge holding this knowledge that Shiro doesn’t want them to know, and using it as a weapon against him. But it’s -- it’s only because they care enough that they’re willing to try.

Shiro looks startled, tension gathering around his wide eyes, a tic in his jaw. He glances between the two of them, perhaps trying to gauge how to react, how to roll with this. His initial response was that of a commanding officer dressing down two cadets, but --

They’re more than that, even without Kuron.

But Kuron _has_ given Pidge and Lance a way in, a doorway to slip within. And Shiro looks -- awful. Tired, pale, miserable. Lance feels a little dizzy anew at seeing him; it’s been easy not to, since Shiro’s been avoiding everyone, wallowing already in silent, lonely grief. He needs friends, even if doesn’t realize he has them here, in the two of them.

“You upset a lot of people,” Shiro says, but he says it simply.

“Sorry,” Lance allows, hands gripping his biceps tight. He rocks on the edge of Red’s jaw, glad the mechanical lion can hold this pose. He feels a little safer, here, in her shadow. “I’ve had a, uh. Rough day. Couple of days. Weeks?”

“It was an emergency,” Pidge agrees. “Won’t happen again. Probably.”

Shiro eyes them, still holding onto tension and disappointment like armor, and then -- he sighs, shoulders slumping. His arms fall at his sides, hands clenched; his head bows a moment, then shakes once. He jerks it back up and pins them both with a look. “Make sure it doesn’t.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Lance says, somehow lazily, somehow grinning, somehow matching Pidge step for step as they step out onto the hangar floor, as they cross the empty space to stand before Shiro, shoulder to shoulder and eyeing him critically. Somehow, Lance says, “Huh. So this is the sort of stunt to get you out of your cave. Jesus, Shiro, have you even been eating?”

“What?” Shiro asks, looking bewildered and vaguely guilty at the accusation.

“Let’s go get burgers,” Pidge declares, patting Green briefly. “That place off Grand just reopened. They have the best freaking fries.”

“God, yeah,” Lance agrees, refusing to think, refusing to remember, refusing to let his body seize up. He breathes, he focuses -- already he’s flipping open his phone to message Keith and Pidge and Allura, too, because he can’t keep running, he can’t keep hiding, and also, “Holy shit! We can show the Alteans the deliciousness that is pure, unadulterated _grease_. This is going to be great!”

“I don’t --”

“Save it, nerd,” Lance says, pointing at Shiro threateningly. As one unit, he and Pidge begin to herd their commander between them, out the bay doors and across the ‘shipyard, toward the shuttles that will take them back into town. “Or I’ll tell the internet that your favorite pokemon is Shaymin.”

“Oh, my god,” Shiro groans, pinching his nose in that way that, on Kuron and Shiro both, means he’s trying to hide smile.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHH okay i've finally caught up with my draft (and my original outline thank fuck lol) so updates are going to be slower going now, <3 haha also? for the record: i've refused to watch the last season of voltron until i finish up some of my wips, for fear of taking even longer to work on them in case my brain insists on trying to adapt to canon, so uh, yeah. figured i'd mention it in case that lack of knowledge somehow crops up in here in weird ways lmao
> 
> gsl;f thank you so much to everyone reading this, kudoing, and commenting especially. i know i don't interact much, but knowing there are people out there who like this jumble of feels is what keeps me going Y_Y thank you thank you kind souls, you are the beeesst omg

Shiro gives in to late night burgers with deliberately bad grace, and it’s such a show, such an obvious act, that Lance feels shame anew at how he’s been treating him. For the first time, Lance isn’t wondering at how violated Shiro might feel having everyone know more about him than he chose. He’s considering, instead, just how lonely Shiro must have been feeling, how adrift. The way he leans into them, bouncing shoulders and then away, how even this close to the anniversary of his grandparents’ death he is sitting in this booth in the diner with the whole Voltron team packed around him, and helplessly smiling.

“It’s good to see you all,” he admits, not in a quiet lull, but when Pidge and Keith are arguing loudly over condiments, with Hunk keeping up a steady ranking of his own preferences. Allura has been steadily consuming elegant bites of her own fries, not much a fan of burgers, and her gaze flickers over to Shiro, as does Lance’s.

The way he said that -- so low, so contained -- as if he was willing to let it slip into obscurity, none of them the wiser. As if he _had_ to say it, couldn’t help himself, he meant it too much. Lance’s heart squeezes in his chest; the burger sits heavy in his stomach.

“And it is good to see you, Shiro,” Allura murmurs, warm and certain. “I think it is easy to forget in times of peace how important the bonds of friendship are. But we are -- are a team. Tightly knit, and stronger for it. I am glad Pidge suggested burgers. Thank you, Lance, for inviting us.”

Startled, Lance brings his head up in a jerk, from where he’d bowed it down to contemplate loose sesame seeds. He hadn’t wanted to get involved in this; it makes him feel sore, like he’s one big ache, a wound open to the air.

“Sure,” he manages.

Shiro is watching him. In the low, harsh lighting of the diner, his eyes are a darker gray than usual, and he looks washed out, worn. The shadows beneath his eyes are a delicate purple. “You all right, Lance?” he murmurs, low enough that Allura lets herself be drawn into the Great Condiment Debate of 2118. 

“Uh, yeah. Super great. Awesome, even. Man, burgers, you know?”

God, Lance is such an idiot.

He can’t look away from Shiro, and Shiro isn’t dropping his gaze, either. He leans in a little, and fuck, why did Lance let himself sit next to him again? How does this keep happening? Is he still so mired in habit and the past that he can’t even fathom a different place than at Shiro’s side? Because if so, he should probably learn how to break that habit. 

Being here, so close and so far, is unbearably familiar and imperfect.

Lance tries not to dwell, tries not to remember, tries not to _know_ how if this were Kuron here beside him then they’d be touching somehow, in some small, important way. Knees pressed together, elbows awkwardly colliding, shoulders nudging -- something, anything.

Not these careful four inches between, too far away to even feel the heat of Shiro’s body.

Lance lets out a quiet, slightly shuddery breath, and Shiro’s eyes narrow, just a little, those white brows coming down into a furrow. Lance gets distracted looking at them; gets distracted imagining Kuron, how Lance used to try and learn his mood from the arch and slant of them, so expressive.

“You uh, you looked like you’d been…”

If this were Kuron, Lance can’t help but thing, then he would have said it. Would have just come right on out and butted in, said: _You looked like you’d been crying_.

Kuron would have said it, would probably have pulled him aside as soon as they had a chance, one arm curled around Lance to try and give him a shield to hide behind, comfort and solidarity. He would have --

_Don’t go there_ , Lance warns himself.

“I’m all right, dude,” Lance says, words a barely there mumble. He shifts his shoulders, tries to roll off the past, tries to remind himself not to hunch up protectively from this moment. “Promise. I’ll be okay.”

An awkward hesitation, and then Shiro bobs his head in a nod. Turns away back to the rest of the table, tries to engage with them. Lance sits back, breathes. In, out, in, out. Forces himself to keep it together, to be cool and calm, to get through this. Tries to hold on to his tattered control, to pretend like none of this is flaying him alive.

It’s not easy, but Lance tries.

* * *

He really, really fucking tries.

And Lance does a good job, he thinks. He grins and laughs, lets Keith and Allura gang up on him about his lessons in swordplay, which he has still been avoiding. Lets Hunk feed him extra curly fries and listens when Coran tells him far too many interesting tidbits about far flung galaxies. Across the table, more than once, Lance meets Pidge’s eyes and see the question there: _you holding up okay?_

_Not really_ , he tries not to show.

_I feel like I’m drowning, like I’m broken apart and crumbling, like I’ll never survive this._

He’s not surprised that they don’t look convinced, but Pidge lets him be, and Lance keeps trying, keep pretending, and it --

It _hurts_ , every second of it.

Lance doesn’t know why he’d bothered to hope it would be any different.

But he’s still trying, and Lance thinks that’s what matters most, maybe. Clings to that noble idea, that martyred concept, and keeps going through the evening, hugs everyone goodbye, and even though he spent the whole afternoon with Hunk spilling out his guts, Lance isn’t really surprised when the Yellow Paladin just hooks him around the neck with an arm, pulls him in close out on the street while everyone is splitting off, and leads him back home. 

“Guess I have some more cuddling to do, huh?” Hunk asks, tone sorrowful and too fucking knowing.

“Today,” Lance declares, exhausted, “has been emotionally brutal.”

With a commiserating noise, Hunk pulls him in all the closer. “Sorry, bud,” he whispers, leaning his head in to knock against Lance’s, gentle, gentle. 

A text alert has Lance fumbling out his phone, checking it. He stumbles when he sees that it’s from Shiro, a simple text in a group chain, saying: **Thanks, guys. Get home safely.**

While he’s staring at it, Pidge replies. **Go sleep, dork. We all know you had a headache through that entire meal.**

True enough; they’d all keyed in on it, but sitting near Shiro as he had been Lance had felt far too attuned to every minute flinch when Shiro’s headache had gotten worse, the longer they sat in in the diner. By the end of it, his face had been pinched, more tired than when they’d begun. Maybe he hadn’t been up for it, maybe Lance and Pidge’s determination had done more harm than good, maybe --

Hunk reaches over before anyone else can reply. His big hand covers the screen, palm warm against Lance’s fingers, disrupting Lance’s negative spiral. “Give me that,” he murmurs, taking Lance’s phone carefully. 

Lance lets him. Lets Hunk turn it off, tuck it into his pocket where Lance can’t easily get it.

For a moment, Lance is angry at how much he is _letting_ things happen. How passive he feels, trying to stand quiet in a stream of bitterness and pain, letting others take care of him, letting things impact him while struggling not to react. It feels weak. It feels awful. It --

“Lance, it’s just me. You can let go, okay? Just let yourself feel miserable if you need to, bud. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

The anger melts away, leaving a cold sort of numbness in its wake. 

Tipping his head back against the solid warmth of Hunk’s arm, Lance looks up at the night sky. There are stars picked out against the velvet blue of it, twinkling, and it’s not at all the most stunning view he’s seen, but it is familiar. It does remind him of home and safety, and so does the concrete under his sneakers and Hunk at his side and the lingering taste of melted cheese and pickles from his burger, and --

There had been this banquet for the Coalition in the K’plath-9 system. 

It’s one of the things Lance has been trying not to think about all night, and failing. There hadn’t been much for the Paladins to do at functions like those, other than see and be seen and _eat_ , eat something other than gelatinous green goo. Not that the fare there is much better.

“Everything has eyes,” Kuron says in a whisper, trying not move his lips.

Lance nods rapidly, feeling queasy as he holds his weird, wobbly, square plate before him like a shield. “I’m pretty sure that platter is _just_ eyes,” he whispers back, leaning in closer to the Black Paladin. “They’re staring at me. All of them! Every single, tiny, beady eye! No matter where I go, they just _follow_ , oh my god. I might turn vegan after this.”

“You mean Kaltenecker hasn’t turned you vegan already?”

“Nah,” Lance scoffs. “I’m a farmer’s kid, man. I raised what I ate, usually. Not that I’m planning on eating Kaltenecker! That cow’s earned its spot as a member of Voltron. But I mean -- usually dinner, even before it’d been cooked, wasn’t just made up of eyeballs staring at me. Judging me. Ugh, this is totally going to haunt me in my dreams. What _even_.”

Kuron laughs softly, leaning in as well, and easy as anything their shoulders are pressed together; solidarity in the face of such strangeness. A warm, wonderful comfort. “I was practically vegan back on Earth,” he admits. It’s the tone he uses when he’s revealing something he usually wouldn’t, or at least not easily. 

It’s the tone that makes Lance feel special, because it lets him know that he _is_.

“Yeah?” he asks, glancing up to look at Kuron.

And he’s -- he’s close. Really close, close enough that Lance can see imperfections in his skin, the rough edges of his scar, the way his gray eyes have specks of what look almost blue in this lighting, ringing around the pupil like a starburst. 

“Yeah,” Kuron admits, face softening. “I uhm. I had this disease? Whatever the Galra did to me that year after Kerberos, it seems to have fixed it, but uh. Before, back on Earth, it could get pretty bad. Controlling my diet helped some.”

“Oh.”

“Mm. Adam used to bitch about how few options I had in most restaurants. Year 2112 and you’d think there would be plenty, but _no_ …”

Lance shifts, presses more firmly into Kuron’s side so that he loses that lost, vague look in his eyes. Brings him back to here, with _him_. “But you’re better now,” he says, “yeah?”

Kuron blinks down at him. “...I. Yeah, I guess so. As far as I can tell, at least.”

“Great.” Lance grins. “In that case, when we get back home -- burgers. Big, fat, juicy burgers, okay, Pal? My treat.”

After a startled pause, Kuron laughs, grins, sinks into Lance; “Yeah. Sounds perfect. I’d like that.”

And it did sound perfect; it had kept Lance going at times, that idea, the solemn vow he’d made to take Kuron out for burgers when they made it home. And maybe Kuron hadn’t realized how much Lance meant with it, how much Lance cared about making it happen, but he _had_. He had meant it, but that was back when Lance had thought Kuron was Shiro, before he knew that Shiro was dead, before Kuron had died, and now --

Lance’s breath hitches with the memory, a fresh wave of grief wrapping over him.

Now, Shiro doesn’t even remember that moment; has no clue that Lance has finally fulfilled a silly, stupid promise to a man he loved more than anything else in the whole fucking stupid, sorry cosmos, in the only way he can, now.

Because Kuron is gone; Lance is never going to get to take him out for burgers.

_Fuck_.

“I don’t want to cry anymore,” Lance whimpers. All the stars in the shallow, fragile bowl of Earth’s sky shattering and streaking across his vision like comets. He has to gasp for air before he can continue. “I’m so tired of hurting, Hunk. I want to be past it. I don’t -- I --”

“Do you want to forget him?”

“ _No_ ,” Lance snaps out, and if it sounds a little too high, a little too frail, then so what. He’s done well, so well today, he deserves to fall apart, now, if he wants to. Hunk told he him could. Lance can pick up the pieces again in the morning, try once more to be better like he’d vowed up there in the black. 

Hunk says, “I don’t -- I don’t know if it will ever stop hurting, bud.”

Lance laughs, even though there’s nothing amusing in the sentiment.

But it’s that or sob, and they’re still in public. Still in public and Lance can still remember the sly motion of Shiro’s hand when he’d stolen Lance’s empty straw wrapper, as if Lance hadn’t been aware of his quirks already, hadn’t deliberately left it untouched and vulnerable on the table, safely away from the condensation of his glass, just so that Shiro could pick it up and fold it into tiny squares because he’s _weird_ , and a nerd, and a fucking jerk who -- who isn’t who he should be, even when Lance knows, knows his secrets, knows how they could have been, knows --

Lance closes his eyes on a blurry night sky, lets the tears run hot and fast down his cheeks.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! but i can now get back to vomiting my feels in the most outrageously dramatic ways that i can think of lololol
> 
> we're still in a bit of a transition period, here, but the ending arc of the story is nigh! thank you to everyone who has commented, messaged, kudo'd, read, thought fondly of this fic, etc. (: i really appreciate it, and! for the record! there were a few comments where i went ":3 :3 :3 :3" for REASONS, i love you guys

Hunk gets him safely home and follows him in. “I’m staying over,” he tells Lance, no give in the demand, only unquestionable kindness and friendship. 

It feels a little like salt in a wound, but also a relief. Lance has felt so small and lost these past weeks, all by himself in the dark. And while there’s still that part of him that wants to circle around his pain like some feral creature, possessive and defensive, and lick his wounds in solitude, Lance is learning to not to indulge. So Lance just sighs and nods instead of protesting, worn out from pretending, from a seeming endless supply of tears. 

Hunk says, “I love you, dude.”

And Lance -- he can’t say the words back, but not because he doesn’t want to. Because he does love Hunk, loves him so much, and Lance appreciates all of this, all of Hunk’s boundless support, his patient kindness. 

No, Lance simply can’t make words for the feelings that are all jammed into his chest suddenly, piled up so high they’ve risen in his throat, clogging him up: gratitude, love, shame, misery, desperation. He only manages a nod in reply, the motion jerky, but apparently that’s enough. Hunk nods back, tips his head down, presses his temple to Lance’s.

Oh, _god_. God, fuck, it -- it just --

Lance wants to say, _I love Kuron. Did you know that I thought he was going to kiss me, once? Like, really and seriously thought he was going to go for it. We were in the middle of training, right, and I’d managed a pretty badass block and dumped him on his ass and -- being the modest individual that I am -- took a moment to crow about my awesome victory._

_And when I stopped and looked down Kuron was just -- sitting there, leaning back on one arm, all sprawled out and smiling with this -- this look, right, this look in his eyes like nothing I’d ever seen, all hot and dark and like a dream._

_I reached out a hand to help him up because I couldn’t think of anything else, and that was just -- the thing to do, right? Help my buddy up off the ground._

_But then he -- he was standing there. I had pulled too hard, or he had leaned in too much. We were so close, so fucking close to each other, and -- and I looked at his mouth because all I could fucking think about was how much I wanted to kiss him, god, I wanted it so, so much, it -- it felt like being set on fire, wanting something that fiercely, and --_

_When I realized what I was doing, I -- I looked up at his eyes again, terrified that he’d noticed._

_But he -- he was too busy looking at me, staring at my mouth with that -- with that fucking look in his eyes, to have seen, to have noticed that I’d done the same._

_God. I think I could’ve gotten drunk off that look. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me like that before, ever. And I thought -- I thought maybe -- I thought I wasn’t alone, you know? In how much I liked him -- the way I felt. That urge to touch and be touched, I could’ve fucking sworn he was going to kiss me, Hunk, but he --_

_He didn’t._

_It didn’t happen. Kuron just cleared his throat all awkward and stepped back, let me go. He said, “Nice job,” and turned away to pick up his sword too fast for me to see if he was blushing, to see if he was affected, to tell if I’d imagined it all or not. I didn’t know what else to do but go along with it, so I did, but I can’t ever forget it -- that moment, that look, what almost --_

_What didn’t happen._

_Not then. Not ever. It didn’t happen, and now it won’t ever happen because he’s fucking gone and I lost my chance, lost all of my chances, and I hate it I hate it I hate it Hunk, I hate it so fucking much, it --_

Fuck.

Just. Fuck it all.

This tenderness of Hunk’s, this not being alone -- it wants to pull all the broken, shattered glass pieces of his heart from him, one by one. Wants to wash them clean of the blood and the mire and the thick black sludge of despair and show them shining to the light, instead. Wants to reveal him, makes him want to reveal himself.

But Lance --

He chokes it all down, instead. 

Maybe some other day, another time, but right now he’s spilled too much of himself already. If he lets everything out, Lance thinks, then he’ll just be -- be empty. Truly empty, not just feel it. There are some things that, while he does desperately wish he could share, they’re -- they’re still his, his in a way that feels real the more he holds onto them, keeps them caged inside.

He needs to keep them there, safe and private, just for a little longer.

_I should have kissed you_ , he thinks, _I should have kissed you then, or a different time, a thousand different times. I should have kissed you and never stopped kissing you. Kuron, I --_

But Lance hadn’t been brave enough.

And now, he just has to learn how to be brave enough to -- to live with that regret, that loss. To pick up the pieces and press them together and move on, keep moving, never giving up. Not even when it’s like now, like this -- where every moment it is almost too painful a thing to keep drawing breath.

That’s all that’s left.

* * *

Lance’s family is all in bed, asleep or getting there. The house feels hushed, quiet, and Hunk and Lance are quiet as well as they get ready to sleep. When they crawl into Lance’s bed Lance doesn’t even protest the space that Hunk takes up or the pillows that he’s stolen, just sprawls out over Hunk and lets his best friend tug up the covers and hold him, as if physical contact might somehow lessen the grief.

And it does; or it numbs it, a little. Lance doesn’t feel as alone, and that’s nice.

But he doesn’t sleep.

It would have been great if he could have. He needs it, Lance knows. He’s worn down and tired and the whole day was a hurricane of agony, a deluge of emotional distress. He is _exhausted_ , but he can’t sleep no matter how he tries to surrender to it, half-desperate for the reprieve it would give him, that brief cessation of existence, of _caring_. Instead, he matches his breathing to Hunk’s snores, presses his ear to Hunk’s chest and listens some to the beat of his best friend’s heart, steady and calm and there, right beside him, refusing to let him be alone.

It’s kind of amazing how much a relief that is.

Maybe it’s enough to give Lance a new perspective. But maybe that has come from -- from everything else, too. From crying until he’s empty, from falling down into the dark so far and deep that there’s nowhere else to _go_. Nothing else to do save reexamine. And he’s done a fair amount of that just recently, so it’s almost easy here, like this, to keep on going, to keep turning his own heart over and over, seeking answers, finding the weak spots, locating the strength he needs no matter how bruised it makes him feel.

Two days. 

Just two days now until Shiro is going to be folded up in grief about his grandparents. There’s no way that he’s told anyone, not even Keith. Lance had seen Keith’s secretive, worried looks at Shiro at the diner, and it had been a helpless, wondering worry, a worry that doesn’t know what’s wrong and thus has no way to _fix_ anything. 

But Lance knows.

Lance knows, and no matter what he’d told himself, firmly and viciously and desperately, all the last few weeks, Lance also now knows this: he can’t abandon Shiro.

That’s the heart of it. Part of the pain that’s piled up and grown around him, thick and choking until it became unbearable. He has fought and fought and fought to keep Kuron and Shiro separate, because they _are_ different. Has fought to accept that Lance has no right to any part of Shiro, that these memories and this intimate knowledge has no place within him, but -- 

They do.

Those memories belong to Lance. 

The secrets he’s earned from Kuron over time, all of it -- they’re _Lance’s_ , now. 

And it feels like making a deliberate choice to rip his heart asunder when he’d been working so hard to numb it, to harden it, but -- he can’t just let Shiro be alone. Shiro may not be Kuron, -- and if Lance’s breath hitches and his heart breaks all over at that thought, so be it; it is what it is -- but he’s still _Shiro_.

Hero, friend, leader -- someone worth protecting and looking out for.

He _can’t_ let Shiro be alone.

He just, he fucking _can’t_. It would be wrong on so many levels -- unfair to Shiro; cruel gratitude to the trust Kuron gave him; a betrayal to Lance’s own nature. It is not within him to abandon, to turn away. Lance knows well how to fight _for_ people, and how to love even when it hurts him deeply, and --

All Lance knows to do is shore up his defenses and remind himself what he’d decided up in the black.

That he would be better, do better. Treat Shiro like a person -- a _friend_ \-- worth taking care of, worth fighting for. Lance won’t keep turning from him every time he catches a glimpse of Kuron’s shadow, lurking sweetly painful in Lance’s memories, in the familiarity between the two that comes from a shared past. It’ll be hard and it will hurt -- the diner and the burgers proved that, if nothing else -- but it’s _worth it_. 

It has to be. 

Miserable, Lance curls tighter into Hunk. Because even with a new lightness in his chest at this acceptance, this determination to walk a new, better path -- it’s still awful. 

It’s still the worst thing he’s ever had to do. 

It still feels like being beaten down and broken past endurance, past any possible repair, and then asked to stand up tall when your body is no longer your own and your heart is lost, lost, lost, and reason dictates that you don’t have it _in_ you to keep going, that you should just lay down and accept defeat, accept --

Lance breathes in.

Breathes _out_.

Counts down the minutes by the crescendo of Hunk’s snores. Warms his bones in the sleepy comfort of his friend’s embrace, protective and all-consuming even in slumber. 

Lance waits out the night, eyes on the pale square of his window, watching for dawn.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all so nice T_T i love you~
> 
> (also, i'd apologize for how much the first scene in this ran away from me and how when i went in to cut it back i just ADDED MORE STUFF but but but I DID WARN YOU IN THE FIRST CHAPTER THAT THIS IS A LOVE STORY??? MY FEELS GOT AWAY FROM ME AGAIN OKAY? OKAY so this chapter is a little longer than intended lololol)

(In the dim gray light of pre-dawn, still dry eyed and unsleeping, Lance finds a brittle kind of solace thinking that -- that Kuron likely would have been proud of him.

Would have _admired_ him for this.

Growing up, Lance had always been _too much_ , in class and with friends, at home and in stores, restaurants, on the streets and in the park and -- everywhere, really. His dad used to say, “This world isn’t big enough for your exuberance. Why not try and moderate a little, hm? It’ll be easier on you.”

He told Kuron about that, once, when the castleship was dim with its night cycle. The Black Paladin had woken from strange dreams, not quite nightmares but unsettling enough he’d sent a message to Lance before he’d thought better of it: **sorry, nevermind. I’m fine, go back to sleep.**

**that’s some bullshit** , Lance had sent back, still rubbing his eyes and tangled in sheets. **go to the kitchen, i’ll be right there.**

Kuron hadn’t felt like talking. Had looked mullish and sullen, glinting shadows beneath stormy gray eyes, hollows in his cheeks. He’d looked stark and unfinished, flinching in his skin, and Lance had found the tin of tea that Hunk hoarded and started pressing buttons until he figured out how to boil water on what he assumed was the Altean equivalent of a stove.

“I think there might have been a whole year where I was grounded,” Lance admits, leaning his hip against the counter while they wait. “I guess I was a bit of a problem child? Mom says I went from super sweet to raging tempers in a heartbeat, and --”

“You were bored, weren’t you?”

Startled, Lance jerks his head around. His vision had gone soft and unfocused, lost to memories as he’d spoken; a little bit nostalgia, a little bit him trying to give Kuron some space, some distance, so that he might relax. Now, Lance stares at him, sees him mirroring Lance’s position across the small expanse of floor between them, arms crossed, hip pressed against the counter, a twitch at the corner of his mouth -- a smile? a sneer? -- that fades quickly under Lance’s attention.

“Sure,” says Lance. “I was a kid. Kids get bored easily.”

“When I was first getting to know Keith,” Kuron says, tone vague with his own memories, now, “all his teachers kept saying he was problematic because he was too smart. He was bored, and he was bored with being bored, so he would lash out or get into trouble, and he didn’t know how to express -- how --” Kuron’s face shutters, closes in, “-- how to express what was bothering him.”

“Shiro,” Lance murmurs, then bites his lip. His body stutters in place, an aborted attempt to go to him, to find some way -- _any_ way -- to ease Kuron’s troubled brow. 

All Lance wants to do is soothe, to find the right opening that might allow Kuron to unburden himself, but -- _Do you want to talk about it? Do you not know what’s wrong, or do you just have a hard time articulating it? About why you wake up screaming, why nothing makes your headaches go away, why you look so confused sometimes, why_ \-- 

Lance doesn’t know the right combination of words, not yet. 

But he thinks -- _hopes_ \-- he’s getting closer.

Lance puts on a deliberately airy tone and scoffingly says, “Seems to me Keith never learned. He’s probably just a --”

“I’m glad. I’m glad the world wasn’t big enough.” 

The way Kuron says this sounds -- harsh. Fierce, a confession that he’s ripping out from deep inside, somewhere selfish and entirely him. Lance is so startled at the interruption of his awkwardly lackluster deflection that all he can do is stare.

Kuron stares back, implacable, as if this is an irrevocable truth.

He says, “If the world was big enough, then -- then maybe you wouldn’t be you. You wouldn’t have left, and come _here_ , been there when I needed you -- when the universe needed you. I’m -- glad. Who else would have been reckless enough, daring enough, to fly an alien spacecraft into the unknown -- and whoop with joy while doing it?”

All Lance can do is -- is keep on staring. His heart is pounding so loudly he’s surprised it doesn’t just beat right out of his chest, shaken loose. 

“Oh,” he says.

Kuron’s mouth twitches again. He shifts on his feet, turns away a little, looks towards the darkened recesses of the kitchen. “Hm. You might be too much for other people. But I -- I rely on your persistence, Lance. I _need_ you to be too much. You never give up, and that -- that is _remarkable_.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Lance says again, because oh, _oh_ , what -- what is this? What is even -- and he -- he doesn’t know what else to _say_ here, how to respond, how to reciprocate -- because inside of him is this fountain of feeling and it's all bubbling up and overflowing, drowning him, intense and grateful and burning-bright, hunger and relief and embarrassment, and -- it’s all _too much_ , even for him -- _especially_ for him when the one who’s said those words -- who’s said such a thing about _him_ \-- when it is Kuron, and he -- he just --

He _wants_. Lance wants so much to -- to hear that again. To circle closer and keep close, to wrap his arms around those wide shoulders and hold on and have Kuron return the gesture, the sentiment, Lance _wants_ \-- and -- and then the water beeps that it’s ready, and --

Now is not the time.

Not now, when Kuron is still raw around the edges, still haunted from his dreams. Not when Kuron has given Lance this gift, he -- he can’t ruin it, not with his own selfish, petty desires. 

Lance forces himself to look away.

Forces himself to simply say “Cool. Thanks,” even though he has to clear his throat a little. He forces himself to keep going, calm, friendly, casual, everything and only what he thinks Kuron might need. “So… Tea? Hunk says it tastes like butter and jam, but it’s just as likely to taste like farts, so shall we see?”

Kuron snorts a laugh, and there’s that twitch again, only this time -- it pulls up, holds long enough to recognizably be called a smile, genuine and rueful and grateful, too.

“Yeah,” Kuron murmurs. “Let’s drink some farts, then.”

Lance has always been _too much_ , and somehow, always, never enough. Or never the right amount of too much, always on someone’s nerves, always disruptive, never falling into line like he should and always, always curious and distracted, and -- 

_And_ \--

_Remarkable_ , Kuron had called him. 

Lance lays awake in Hunk’s arms, stares at the encroaching dawn, and thinks: _I am too much. Too much sadness, too much love, too much regret. I think I’m going to fall to pieces beneath the weight of it, but I -- I won’t. I haven’t yet._

_I won’t stop being too much, I promise_.)

* * *

In the morning, after Hunk has been fed and stumbled back home, bleary eyed and still worried, Lance knows he has to make a decision. Figure out _something_ to ease the anxiety scratching at his heart, demanding he act. But first --

He takes the glass of cafecito his mom hands him in the kitchen. Accepts the kiss she presses silent to his brow, and goes outside. Out into the little green square yard they’ve been allotted where it smells of growing things and fresh air. Lance sits, the moisture of the ground immediately soaking through his jeans, the morning sun coming down in golden strokes of light. 

And Lance just...keeps breathing.

If he can breathe, he thinks, then he’s not done yet.

Everything awful can get better, can heal over a bit with time, and so can he, and -- and the world is a beautiful place, isn’t it? Uncaring, perhaps, but still beautiful, because it’s _people_ who give the world meaning. Who look at the sky all pale and shining and think -- what a lovely shade of blue -- or stare at a cloud that has no rhyme or reason to its shape and say -- that looks like a horse, don’t you think?

And that -- that _is_ beautiful, that means something, even burdened down with grief. Maybe especially when burdened with grief. It is, it is, it _is_ , damn it.

It has to be.

So Lance makes himself look around, makes himself breathe, makes himself be _present_ for a moment, just the one, and there are tears building in his eyes, burning, a lump forming in the back of his throat that threatens to choke him, and he stares hard at the three tiny birds near the back fence, so small they would be dwarfed within his cupped palms. Lance likes the way their tiny, hollow legs propel them in great hops, the way their heads turn this way and that, as though eager to see, the way they chirp, bright and strident and too loud.

Slowly, he breathes until it’s no longer ragged; until the burn in his eyes fade to a gentler ache, and the tightness of his throat is capable of being soothed with sips of thick cream and strong coffee, the memory of his mother’s half-pained smile when she’d looked at him that morning, knowing he was hurting but not how to help, knowing --

Knowing that all she could do was be there for him, steadfast and certain.

Across the yard, the three little birds fly up in a sudden frantic wave of flapping wings and whistling cries, but not far -- just to the low hanging, slender branches of a flowering tree Lance doesn’t know the name of. They twitter to each other, hop about, and come back down to the ground once more, daring and determined.

Lance keeps breathing.

* * *

In the afternoon, Lance grabs a shuttle to the Garrison. It feels suddenly strange being there. Nothing has changed, the people are all the same -- he waves at some, makes menacing faces at the backs of a few others -- and knows exactly where he’s going. Nothing is _different_ , that’s just him, and the way that Lance views the world and the people around him at the moment.

Everything seems precious and fragile and frightening.

_Holy crow_ , Lance realizes.

He, uh… really needs to get some sleep, doesn’t he?

_When I’m done here_ , he thinks to himself, like a promise or a coax. Some sort of distraction to take the edge off, maybe, to make it a little easier to hold himself together. Because the truth is that _he_ is the thing that feels fragile and breakable. It’s Lance that wavers and warbles through the world, edges frayed, threads coming loose. He imagines they’re catching on the corners, on passing shoulders, caught in the tread of military grade boots. Soon, Lance will be little more than spools of color trailing these echoing, sterile halls, he --

“Lance,” says Keith.

Oh. He’s here.

Lance shakes himself, trying to settle back into his skin. He can feel the beat of his heart in a way that’s uncomfortable, and his chest feels likes its fizzing, too tight, like one wrong move will cause a schism. But Lance ignores it, because it’s not important -- he has to do this. 

“Heeey,” he says back, fluttering his fingers because he’s just too tired for anything more exuberant. “My dude, might I come into the inner sanctum? Or is there a secret trial by blade and fire that I have to undertake to gain the honor? Because if there is I’m definitely going to find a way to cheat, probably by begging miserably or --”

“Oh, my _god_ ,” groans Keith, reaching out to fist his hand into Lance’s jacket. “Shut the fuck up.”

“-- I suppose I could just keep chattering until you give in -- aha! Once again, my master plan is one of brilliance and I have circumvented --”

Keith slaps his palm on the wall switch to shut the door again, Lance on the inside, now. He shoves Lance into it as soon as it’s closed, hard enough to jar a little, to make his breath hitch and his words to burble to a stop, and -- and Lance appreciates that, actually, just this once, because he’s tired enough and sorry enough and turned around enough he honestly doesn’t know if he could have stopped the words himself, and he’s more than a little afraid of what he might end up revealing.

“Ouch,” Lance says.

Keith sighs. “Sorry,” he replies, loosening his grip and stepping back. “Come sit down. Everything okay?”

_No_.

“More or less,” Lance assures. “I just have a -- a favor. To ask of you.”

Now that he’s here, Lance isn’t -- he -- well, he doesn’t really know. He had entertained, briefly, the thought of doing the job himself. Of being strong enough, brave enough, kind enough, but Lance isn’t _masochistic_ enough to do that to himself. Not when just the thought of getting through the day at Shiro’s side had left him shaking in the grass.

So, Keith.

Keith, who was close to Shiro even before they all went off to save the universe; Keith, who knows a lot, but maybe not everything, about how the real Shiro functions; Keith, who Lance knows without a shadow of a doubt that Lance can entrust this task to.

It still feels like he’d rather rip his own skin off, though, than share this.

For himself, Lance wants nothing more than to hold Kuron’s memory tight. To bare his teeth and protect what he has left, keep it private, keep it his. Lance never wants to let it go, the tantalizing knowledge of how trusted he was, how close he was allowed.

But for Shiro, Lance is going to be _better_ than that.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this section is really tough for me, so it's going to be slow going for a little while i think, pls bear with me <3
> 
> and thank you to all the lovin, it means a lot to me

Keith, seated on the edge of his bed, crosses his arms _and_ his legs, tilts his head at a speculative angle, and gives Lance a _look_. The room isn’t very bright, which Lance would make fun of if he was feeling a little better -- _what, you live in a cave now, wolfman?_ \-- but he just can’t find it in himself to try. And the dim lighting gives an added effect to Keith’s glower, already unfairly enhanced by his shaggy bangs.

“A favor?” he asks. “Lance, you’ve barely spoken to me in weeks! Now you --”

“Hey now. Bonds brought on by mutual life saving have an expiration date? You can’t just do a dude a favor even if he hasn’t chatted you up in a teeny little while?”

“ _No_ ,” Keith growls out, “there’s no expiration date, Lance. But --”

“C’mon,” Lance wheedles, ducking his head to examine his cuticles. They need work. Pidge really was right -- his usual self-care regimen has gone all to shit lately. Lance should probably work on that. For now, he runs his thumb over the slightly ragged edges of his nails, hiding the way his face twists. He says, “Don’t be like that.”

“Don’t _you_ be like _this_ , Lance!”

Lance falls silent.

Because that -- that was fair, and so was Keith’s tone. Aggravated and hurt, frustrated and worried. Lance clenches his teeth, digs his thumb in a little harder, and tries not to think about how much he hates this. Keith is his friend, yes, but he’s -- Lance doesn’t want for Keith to see him broken like this. Doesn’t want Keith of all people to see how weak he’s become, how lost.

The silence between them grows legs, and fur, and teeth, and becomes a cosmic space wolf slipping lithely from behind Keith’s back to the floor. Cosmo prowls close to Lance, presses his face against Lance’s hip, and whines, ears tilted back and sideways in apparent dismay. “Hey, buddy,” Lance says, voice so low it’s barely a sound at all. “I see you haven’t eaten Keith, yet.”

From the bed there comes a sigh.

Then, “Lance. Pet my awesome space wolf.”

Lance does, dropping his hand and rifling his fingers through Cosmo’s awesome, slightly electric feeling ruff. He says, “Only because your space wolf is indeed awesome and not because you told me to. I still can’t believe you’re withholding favors. We saved _Earth_ together, dude.”

“I’m not --”

The way Keith forcibly cuts himself off is kind of hysterical, but worrisome. Mostly because if Lance can’t keep him distracted with aggravation and rage then he might see, he might _notice_ , and Lance knew it, he knew this was a bad idea. He hasn’t slept more than a few hours here and there in a _week_ , hasn’t slept at all in two days, and he actually desperately needs a shower, and -- 

And --

Keith is up from the bed, at Lance’s side before he can even startle. 

A cosmic wolf bookends Lance on the left, a sullen lone wolf bookends him on the right. He’s trapped, and before his breath can finish catching in his chest Lance already has one hand back behind him, groping blinding for the manual switch that will open the door, release him, let him _run_.

“Lance,” Keith says, obviously pained.

“Sorry,” Lance forces out, and it -- it sounds wrecked. Awful. Entirely too truthful.

Lance doesn’t want to fucking _do_ this again.

He’s so stupid. Why did he come here? He could have -- he should have texted. He has Keith’s number, he could have just sent a few messages and been safe, far from here, far from opening himself up to yet another set of eyes, another pair of hands to pry him open that little bit further, to force him to spew out the hate and pain and self-pity that’s been stagnating inside him for weeks -- for _longer_ \-- for --

Keith snaps, “Cosmo.”

A gentle, fanged mouth grips Lance’s hand and then there’s a -- a _bleep_ \-- a moment where Lance dissolves into cold and stars and eternity, and then he’s whole and real and in Keith’s bed, cosmic fucking wolf laid out on his chest and pinning him flat on his back. What the --

“Unfair advantage!”

“Like I care,” Keith says, deadpan. He appears in Lance’s vision, arms still folded over his chest, face still set in a scowl. A default expression, like resting “I’ll murder you and all you love” face. But he says, “Jesus, Lance. I’m _worried_. We’re all worried, and you -- you seriously, seriously need to sleep. I _know_ what you look like sleep-deprived, and you’re like, three hours out from wearing your pants on your head and trying to teach Coran how to do aerial yoga again.”

Lance squints at him in betrayal, says, “We promised to never speak of that!” but inside he’s --

He’s breaking again. 

Funny how powerful kindness is, he thinks. How a single warm touch of it is enough to shatter a whole barrier, all the defenses Lance had tried to pull around him, all the casual distance and glib responses. He hadn’t wanted Keith to see it, to see his twisted insides, and Keith still hasn’t seen it yet, but apparently he doesn’t need to -- he can see the superficial bruising well enough to guess.

Shame licks up Lance’s spine, twisting it; shame and fear and brutal, agonizing grief.

Because there may be a part of Lance that hates Keith a little for going to save Shiro and failing Kuron instead. And because there may be a part of Lance, too, that desperately wants to beg Keith to fix it, to fix all of this, to find a way to make it okay, because he’s the Black Paladin and their leader and he’s always managed to pull off the impossible before, but this --

There is no fixing this.

Lance feels too many complicated things, and they’re all a snarl in his chest. He didn’t unspool in the halls but that’s because he’s tangled up inside, a vicious knot impossible to unpick. He never should have come here. He never should have faced Keith, he’s not brave enough or strong enough to withstand this, he --

_Just breathe._

It might be weakness, but Lance imagines, just for a moment -- just for _now_ , when he needs it so badly -- that he’s in one of the training rooms on the castleship, before everything went to shit. He imagines lining up his rifle to take the shot, and Kuron at his back, steady and patient, murmuring, “Just breathe, Lance. You’ve got this.” with absolute, unshakable certainty.

It doesn’t help as much as he wants it to, but it helps a little.

Clears darkness from the edge of his vision, lets him draw in breath in a way that isn’t quite knife-sharp agony. Lets him hear Keith as he says, “Cosmo’s going to sit on you until you get at least four hours of sleep. Come find me when you wake up, _then_ we’ll talk about this favor. Okay?”

“What? No, no Keith, just let me --”

Another sigh -- aggravated on the edges, concerned all the way through its core -- and then Keith’s gloved hand is hesitantly resting across Lance’s brow, covering Lance’s eyes. “Please. Just -- sleep, Lance. You’ll feel better.”

A bitter, choked up laugh tries to emerge at that -- _you’ll feel better_ \-- as though Lance hasn’t been trying and trying and _trying_ , as if sleep is a magical cure-all that can end pain and suffering. Maybe, maybe if he slept a thousand years, lost to dreams and memories, maybe then, but --

Cosmo’s weight keeps the laugh trapped; all that emerges is a faint wheeze.

Keith’s hand is warm, uncertain but willing to try, to try and be here for Lance, who is busted up and broken and Keith doesn’t even know why, or how, but he’s trying anyway, and fuck, fuck Lance has some really good friends, has a family that loves him, that cares, that will do anything they can to help, in whatever little way possible, and it -- fuck, it --

The shame is still licking up along his spine, saturating him. But he’s dealt with worse.

“Okay,” Lance says, and turns his head away.

Keith’s hand disappears with the motion but the warmth of it still lingers, the sentiment. “Great,” he says, voice gruff. “Pet Cosmo if you have trouble drifting off. It’s, uh. Really soothing.” And then Lance listens to him stride across the room, the door opening, shutting, Lance alone in a strange bed with an alien wolf on his chest, warm and heavy.

“Yeah,” Lance sighs. “All right, sure. Why not.”

He pets Cosmo because it _is_ soothing, and the repetitive nature of the act helps keep him from thinking of anything too deeply. But he doesn’t expect to fall asleep. He hadn’t fallen asleep last night with Hunk, warm and wrapped up and exhausted from crying, so why would --

* * *

Lance sleeps for six hours.

When he wakes, he feels like shit. Clammy with half-dried sweat, a horrible taste in his mouth, gunk in the corners of his eyes. He’s exhausted straight through, body aching with it, and he groans as he forces himself upright. “Here,” says Keith, and presses a cool glass against the side of Lance’s hand.

It hadn’t been a slow progression. Lance had just -- suddenly been wide awake, achingly sober, even with his eyes shut tight and his brain soft from forgotten dreaming. He takes a moment to settle, still reeling a little, like he’s trying to catch up to himself, trying to realign with the shape of who and what he is, how he feels. 

Doesn’t take long -- he feels like shit, and sad, and like a thousand showers wouldn’t be enough to wash him clean. But he doesn’t feel _quite_ as fragile. The sleep had helped, even if he doesn’t feel _better_ , exactly. 

Keith nudges insistently at his hand again, so Lance takes the glass. Without opening his eyes Lance sips at the water, tepid and metallic, but better than the cottony murk his mouth had been.

“Thanks,” he croaks when he’s done.

Keith takes it back carefully, sets it aside with a gentle _thunk_. “No problem. It’s just after nineteen hundred, by the way. Do you need to call anyone?”

Shaking his head, Lance slowly opens his eyes, keeping his gaze down on his fingers, the knuckles tight where they’re grasping Keith’s bed spread. Sometime during his nap, Keith had tucked him in. _Jesus_. “No,” he says, a second later. “No, it’s fine. It -- thanks, dude. For the nap. You were right, I kind of needed that.”

“Mm. You still look like hell.”

Lance snorts, rolls his eyes. “Annnd thanks for that, too, I guess. So kind.”

“Any time,” Keith says, in that perfectly deadpan, dry way he has that makes Lance crack up, now, when once long ago it would have sent him into a spitting rage. With a sigh, Lance drags himself up and back, to rest against the headboard. Keith mirrors him, climbing in to sit cross legged at the foot of the bed, facing him.

“So,” says Lance.

Keith quirks his eyebrows, as if in question. But what he says is, “Is this about… Kuron?”

Lance has to blink, because when he came up with this plan it was mostly just _find Keith, tell him to keep an eye out for Shiro in the next few days, get the fuck back home and eat a tub of ice cream and also all your feelings_ \-- there wasn’t much else, to be honest. 

Lance is _trying_.

Apparently, that doesn’t mean he’s adept at it.

“No,” he answers, a little stilted. “It’s -- Shiro. About the -- the real Shiro.”

Slowly, Keith replies: “I think, at this point, we can all just agree that -- that Shiro is Shiro. And Kuron was… Kuron.”

Huh.

Lance really hadn’t expected that, but maybe he should have. He finds that he’s rubbing at his chest, like his heart really is just a muscle, and it’s cramped up and if he can just massage it right it’ll relax, ease up. Keith’s watching the motion of his fingers with a pinched mouth, belligerent as always in his concern. Lance asks, “Have you been talking to Pidge?”

“A little,” Keith admits with a flickering gaze, up then back, tracking Lance’s insistent fingers. “I don’t -- hm.”

“...You don’t…?”

Pensive, Keith shakes his head. But he is trying, too, it seems, even if he’s not any good at it either. And so Keith also says, “I don’t know that -- that I can ever understand. Not like the rest of you. I -- I tried so hard to get Shiro back, every time. But when he was there -- when _Kuron_ was there -- I wasn’t, not really. Not for long. So I didn’t -- I didn’t have the same experience. The same disconnect all of you had, when Shiro really did come back.”

_When Kuron didn’t._

It echoes through him, scraping against every vulnerable, defenseless place inside of him. Lance has to swallow, and it hurts and is too difficult, because there is -- so much. So much to say to that, so many things, but also nothing at all. Because Keith is right -- he doesn’t know. He wasn’t there. He --

Keith says, grimly determined: “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. For a lot of reasons, but also for -- for this. For not knowing Kuron like you did. Not knowing what you’re going through. I’m... I’m sorry I don’t understand. But I’ll try and -- and be understanding anyway. So if you -- uh. If you need to talk, or anything. If I can help, I’ll --”

And Lance can’t help it, he --

He _laughs_.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr](http://thelionshoarde.tumblr.com/) <3


End file.
